Lisa McShane Art

Horse Heaven Hills Evening. ©2014 Lisa McShane. Oil on Linen. 20" x 30" We visited McBee Road atop the Horse Heaven Hills twice in one day last Fall, when the light was long and saturated. This is the view looking towards the Columbia River.

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.

In progress - Rattlesnake dusk. This past few weeks I've been trying something out on Facebook: posting an image each day of the progress of a painting. I started with just the sketch and at the end of my day in the studio I pull out my camera and tripod and snap a shot. You can join the crazy fun by clicking here and then 'liking' my page on Facebook. As it turns out, it really doesn't influence my process. I don't paint differently because I take a photo each day. But I don't know that it's really all that interesting for those who follow me on Facebook. The nature of Facebook is that an image pops up randomly in their feed and they may see one every few days but without context unless they click on it. At the end I think I'll take each image and put them together in a quick slideshow. What I'd like is a 'flipbook' or 'time lapse' approach to quickly see the changes take place. If you know what program will work to make th...

Rattlesnake and River. ©2011. Lisa McShane. Oil on Linen. 16" x 36". Now it's finished. Just a little more work on the sky.

Evening Above the Horse Heaven Hills. ©2010 Lisa McShane. 20" x 30". Oil on Linen. In December I spent several days at museums in Washington DC studying paintings. I was most interested in Inness, Twachtman and Whistler. But mostly George Inness. Since my return - well there were the holidays & visitors & a bit of flu & a little project of insulating a 117-year old hosue - but I've slowed down my painting to experiment with some of the techniques I observed with Inness and others. This one has more layers - many, many more - in the opaque paint - mostly in the sky. I placed the foreground in shadow and put the light in the middle - a compositional approach Inness used in many of my favorite paintings. The foreground is a mix of transparent glazes and scumbles - back and forth and back and forth between the two layers - but with more visible texture than I had been using in the transparent passages. I used the sky as a way to focus on the light falling...

Dan and Sam the dog setting up our picnic View of Rattlesnake Mountain and Red Mountain from the top of the Horse Heaven Hills We spent a few days over in Walla Walla and Kennewick this last week and the weather was stunning. Friday night we drove up as far as our car could safely go on McBee Road in the Horse Heaven Hills for a sunset picnic. We then walked up to the top.  Fortunately a breeze picked up because a gazillion little winged ants had just hatched out and completely covered us with each step! It was looking like one of those romantic ideas gone wrong. But up at the top it was lovely. You can see the view to the north of Rattlesnake Mountain to the left and Red Mountain to the right. Behind us the high plateau of the Horse Heaven Hills sloped to the Columbia River. To the west, we could see Mt. Adams and Mt. Rainier. We had wine, cheese, bread, Sam rolled around and covered herself with dirt and sticks and the sunset was lovely.  The Horse Heaven Hills is ...

Road Into the Fog in the Horse Heavens. 22 x 30. Oil on Linen. Such a simple image, so hard to capture. This is the fog from the Columbia gorge rolling over the top of the Horse Heaven Hills near the Yakima River. The Horse Heavens are a ridge that separates the Columbia from the Yakima and now are one of the prime wine growing areas in the world (red wines, peppery.)

Horse Heaven Hills 1 Study. Oil on Linen Panel. 6" x 8". This past couple of weeks I've worked on a number of studies of eastern Washington landscapes. I'm preparing for a large and interesting series of paintings over there and thinking through how to merge the quality of the landscape and light with indirect painting. Many of the yellow paints I like best are opaque and thus, not suitable for glazing. This was painted with an underpainting of Vasari Shale and Gamblin Transparent Earth Yellow. Over that I layered Vasari Naples Yellow (I have a really big, to-die-for tube of the stuff) and Transparent Earth Yellow mixed with a translucent Holbein gray. Some layers were toned down with the Shale to add a dusty quality. After all, what we remember as 'yellow' is often a brown. Oh, and I used a bit of that gritty Williamsburg Brown Ochre in this too. The sky is a mix of Williamsburg T-Z White, Gamblin Indanthrone Blue, Gamblin Manganese Blue Hue (sadly th...