Lisa McShane Art

Dryland Wheat on the Plateau . ©2011 Lisa McShane. Oil on Linen. 12" x 24". SOLD. This small piece is the result of my experiments with painting wheat. This is the plateau that my great grandparents settled. It's always struck me as a strange place to settle. Around the time they moved there, Washington was a new state and this was a rocky, lawless area. The land was carved out by massive floods and where they live, water is a long way below the ground. Each farm is huge and is spread out along the tops of plateaus, separated by coulees. There are basalt outcrops in the coulees and rattlesnakes. It's hard to picture arriving in a wagon and thinking, "Yes, this looks like home." But it's the edge of the Palouse and according to my husband (a geologist) the soil is windblown loess (that's a good thing.) Now I think it's stunning.

Two Mangoes. Oil on Linen on Board. 6 x 8". These are from a local store but mangoes always remind me of a road trip my husband, our daughter and I took more than 20 years ago. We had an old diesel Volkswagen Rabbit and decided to drive to Chiapas from California. Yes, Chiapas, the far south of Mexico. Yes, that was crazy. Yes, my mother was worried. We made it as far as Puerto Angel along the Pacific Coast but had to turn east towards Oaxaca and Puebla because our car kept breaking down. Wonderful people rebuilt it at the Volkswagen factory in Puebla. We had many great adventures but back to mangoes - We were driving south along the Pacific just north of Acapulco. We were the only car on the highway but lining the road for approximately 2 miles were people sitting with boxes of mangoes. All for sale. But no buyers. Miles of mangoes. It was a striking image and I think of that everytime I see a box of mangoes at the store. Finally - buyers.

Pomegranate 3. Oil on Gessobord. 5 x 7. Another pomegranate! It's been a little slow in my studio for a week now partly because it's cold and damp out. I've had 7 medium to large paintings, all in various stages of wet and/or sticky, hanging from every hook. Each day I paint my small daily painting (pomegranates rock!) then start another large landscape so that I have a painting to work on. We've had crazy weather here in western Washington with heavy rain and nights of howling 60 mph winds. Yesterday morning the basement had water in the low spots and there was water seeping into the crawl space underneath my studio. So I put the dehumidifier in the studio hallway and today all my large paintings were no longer sticky! It seems a little drying out goes a long way.

Seckel Pears. Oil on Gessobord. 5 x 5". SOLD Friday night I went out at 11 (way past bedtime!) to pick our son up from a friend's house. We stopped at Haggen's grocery store so I could buy more fruits for painting. They had the most beautiful selection of pears, apples and pomegranites, including these cute little pears. Seckel pears sound like something out of 19th century Europe. Small, charming, chartreuse flushed with rose. The clerk commented on how pink and cute they were. I'm currently working on six medium to large landscapes but with fall moving into winter here, nothing dries in my studio. That's why I have six wet paintings: unable to finish any of them, I just start more. In the meanwhile, I'll paint more small paintings.

Red Bartlett 1. Oil on Linen on Board. 6 x 8. Red Bartlett 2. Oil on Linen on Board. 6 x 8. This is a rugged, large pear, painted from two different angles. My husband, the brilliant art consultant/geologist, suggested I paint my fruit paintings in groups. Since I'm always inclined to paint two of everything (I have no idea why I do that) it made sense. So I started with this wonderful pear.

Persimmons 1. Oil on linen on board. 5 x 7. Each fall I buy persimmons and they ripen for a month or more in the kitchen. No-one else will touch them but I think they're fantastic. One of my favorite fruits.

Pomegranates 2. Oil on Linen on Board. 5 x 7. I painted the pomegranates again. They're starting to wrinkle a bit so I'm off in search of more. Such a beautiful, odd fruit.

Pomegranates 1. Oil on Linen on Board. 5 x 7. This is my first painting of pomegranates and there will be several. I've decided to use a photo of one of my paintings for Christmas cards this year and I've always loved seeing pomegranates this time of year. Beautiful, round and red.

Another Study for After Pissarro. Oil on Canvas. 8 x 10. I took another shot at this painting yesterday and I'm happy now with the result. It needed a thick application of paint to work.

Three Red Pears. Oil on Linen on Board. 6" x 8". Two star crimson pears and one red bartlett on the windowsill of my studio.

Red Pears 4. Oil on Gessobord. 6 x 6. I tracked down more red pears. They have such a great color.

The Peppers. Oil on Gessobord. 5" x 7". I confess, I had doubts. When my husband first planted the pepper plant I scoffed. Actually I pulled it out because he put it in my front windowbox. He then planted it in the garden by the beans. And the plant grew! And the peppers grew! And in our record-breaking hot, hot summer it ripened. Now I'm a believer. So this painting is for Dan.

3 Figs 3. Oil on Linen on Board. 6" x 8". And another fig painting!

4 Black Mission Figs. Oil on Gessobord. 5 x 7. I have an entire box of figs for painting! Figs and red pears are currently my favorite still life subject.

Two Bosc Pears. Oil on Gessobord. 6" x 6". Some paintings flow and some are a struggle. This one was repainted 4 times. I was most interested in the space between the two pears and wanted to focus on the movement between the two. So I started with optimism and two underripe bosc pears against a medium blue background. The background was all wrong. So I painted it dark purple and repainted the pears. Even more wrong. Then I painted the background red, twice, to make it the color of my bathroom wall. And repainted the pears two more times. Each time I liked the pears less. A lot less. Then the painting sat, forlorn, on a side easel for a week or more. I thought about putting it in the garbage can. Meanwhile the two bosc pears continued to ripen, I used them in another painting , then moved them back to my kitchen windowsill. This week dozens of delicious pears have come and gone from my kitchen. I put pears in a spinach salad dressed with olive oil, sherry vinegar and pink Hi...

3 Black Mission Figs. Oil on Gessobord . 5" x 7". Fig season continues in my kitchen. These join colanders of tomatoes and baskets of pears on the counter. I've been interested in the shifting colors of figs as they ripen. These are much bluer than previous paintings simply because the figs are bluer. Less black, no undertone of red.

3 Different Pears. 6 x 8. Oil on Linen Panel. Well, I've been finding and painting more pears this week. In this painting are two bosc pears and an almost-ripe bartlett. I struggled with this one a bit. Not really sure yet what I think of it except that I cannot love every painting equally. But this one answers a dear friend's question of whether or not I would support integration of pears. Apparently yes.

Three Figs. Oil on Linen Panel. 5" x 7". This one is dark, and the difference between the blue and purple of the fig and the olive green of the background is subtle and hard to see on a computer monitor. But I do love this painting! Funny how we have favorites. Part of it is that I love how figs look. What beautiful fruits! I live at the far north zone for growing a fig tree but I'm planting one next spring. I have the spot picked out. When an arctic blast is predicted, I'll have to cover it, but I'll happily do that to grow these gems. This one is Black Mission, and they came to me from California. I picked out a little basket at the Food Coop, carefully selecting the one that had the most green on the figs. Painted them that day and by the next day, they had lost their luster. I'll bake them for dessert tonight. Another reason I love this painting is that I love to paint on linen panels. I'm switching to all linen panels soon. These are by Art Board and...

Red Pears 3. Oil on Gessoboard. 5 x 7. The last painting of these two beautiful red pears. They've been eaten. By day 3 they were perfectly ripe with small brown spots starting to form.

Red Pears. Oil on Linen Board. 6 x 8. The same two pears but in a different location. I'd set them on my laptop for a minute while I moved some books around and liked the dark quality of the blank computer screen behind them. Last week I'd ordered the book Color Mixing for Artists and I've been playing with the different color ideas I found in there. The dark background, a color I love on the linen, is a mix of Viridian and Cadmium Red.