Lisa McShane Art

Dryland Rain. ©2011 Lisa McShane. Oil on Linen. 30" x 20". Paintings seem to arrive as a combination of experiences. This one is a good example of that. A friend of mine moved into a new house last year and hung a large photograph in his entry. It's a black and white landscape with a low horizon, a highway and clouds. It's a vertical image and because I love road images, I love to look at it. Last last winter I was driving across eastern Washington with another friend and she asked 'do you ever paint vertical landscapes?' I said rarely and a minute later we were driving towards a virga rain cloud - desert rain where it evaporates before it hits the ground. I thought of my friend's photograph of the road and clouds. Vanessa turned the camera sideways and started snapping vertical pictures. Then later I was working on this painting and visited the Amon Carter Museum in Forth Worth Texas with Deborah Paris , Sara Lubinski and others to see the exhibi...

Skagit River Sunset. ©2011 Lisa McShane. Oil on Linen. 12" x 24". The sun setting over a bend in the Skagit River. This is a painting that I started last September and finished last week. There are many layers and I experimented with reflection, light and composition.

Along the Ridge at Dusk. ©2011 Lisa McShane. Oil on Linen. 24"x36". I finished this painting today at noon, after working on it nearly every day for about 3 months. For a time I was posting daily images of it on Facebook, which you can see here , and I wrote about it on my blog here and here . After awhile I stopped posting the images daily for a few reasons. It seemed that the changes were too subtle to be really interesting and for most, they might be wondering why I was posting the same exact painting every day. And then at one point I needed to make corrections and lighten up and change an area and that makes the painting temporarily seriously ugly. I didn't want to alarm friends who might wonder why I was ruining my painting. While this was in progress I went back to sketch Rattlesnake Mountain and when I was in the studio the next day, quickly added what I needed to make the mid-ground work for me.

Perigee Moon . ©2011 Lisa McShane. Oil on Linen 20" x 12" The day we had the super moon this March it was oddly clear in Bellingham. I picked up another artist, Donna Auer , well before dawn and we drove to Lake Samish to watch the moon set and the sun rise. We chased the moon a bit as we struggled to find the right viewing spot what with trees and houses blocking our view. We stopped at one point on a dead end road and saw the moon high through the branches. Lovely. I've placed it lower but remember well how it looked.

I'd seen a few of Remington's paintings over the years that pretty much knocked my socks off. Yet I'm surprised with each one I see because I think of him - still - as an illustrator. The last few paintings I saw changed that. I now see him in a whole new light. Night. Two weeks ago I visited the Gilcrease museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Great paintings there by artists I was unfamiliar with, like William Jacob Hays and his painting Herd of Buffalo on the Bed of the River Missouri . Unfortunately they don't allow photographs and they sell very few reproductions in their gift shop. This one isn't on their website, nor is their fine Remington nocturne online. I've got nothing to show you. But there was a Remington Nocturne and it was amazing. Then the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth which, happily, allows visitors to take photographs of their permanent collection. After all, why the heck wouldn't a museum allow that? So sensible. Here's their Remington wit...

There are some wonderfully fine and kind painters up here in the NW corner of the US. All of us braving the months of drizzle for the long summer days. David Ridgeway is new to the blogging world but definitely not new to painting. I had the opportunity to visit his home and studio on a bright snowy day in December. Click here to see his new blog and a post with a great painting of Orcas Island. John Stinson paints NW Washington and the Palouse (yes! like I do!) but with a somewhat different approach. I love his work. The first time I saw one of his paintings it was of a field near Coupeville Washington. I'd tried (failed) to capture the same scene a few months prior. He'd really nailed it. Here's his blog. And Kat Schneider. Lovely, lovely abstracts. Hilarious sense of humor. Here.

As part of my extensive tour of museums and BBQ joints in the south, I also visited Kansas City. I'm pleased to report that they have a really fine museum: the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Ar t. The museum is free to visit, has a wonderful collection of American art to study and allows you to take photographs. In fact, one of the museum guards had a nice discussion with me about how close I should be from the surface of the painting for my photographs. She approached me and said that she understood what I was doing but perhaps they'd be more comfortable if I was about 2 inches farther back. Can do, very nice. The collection included a very good Inness, a lovely small Homer and a Sargent. There were many others but those were my top favorites. George Inness, Old Farm - Montclair , 1893. Oil on Plywood. This was one of Inness' last paintings as he died in 1894. Note the wonderfully layered textures. George Inness, Old Farm - Montclair , 1893, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Ar...