Lisa McShane Art

Towards Bow. ©2013 Lisa McShane. Oil on Canvas. 30"x30". Winter in the northwest. This is the view to the west in Skagit. I don't know why, but the sky under the clouds is often yellow (when we can catch a glimpse.)

Blanchard in the Clouds. ©2011 Lisa McShane. Oil on Linen Panel. 15" x 15". As the new year comes to a close the drizzle coats my skylights and I'm focused on finishing paintings of winter in the Northwest. This is what I often see to the west when I head home - the sun slipping under the clouds just beyond Blanchard Mountain, with the oyster gray clouds piling up overhead. Blanchard Mountain was an area I worked to protect for a number of years and it holds great meaning to me.

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.

Across the Fields. ©2011 Lisa McShane. Oil on Linen. 16" x 20." Just back from a quick trip to eastern Washington where the sun and light were - as they often are - amazing. I drove up to the top of McBee road in the Horse Heaven Hills to see dawn on the face of Rattlesnake Mountain. But it was good to be back in the studio and put the last glaze on the grasses of this painting of Skagit county, looking west late in the afternoon.

Blanchard Dusk. ©2011 Lisa McShane. Oil on Canvas. 30" x 40". Looking east across Samish Bay at dusk with the toe of Blanchard Mountain on the right and flooded fields in the foreground. Blanchard Mountain is a special place. It's the only place along the coast where the Cascades reach the sea. From the top of Blanchard Mountain you can see the entire San Juan archipelago to the east and to the west, Mt. Baker and the Twin Sisters.

River of Light . ©2010 Lisa McShane. 16" x 20". Oil on Linen Panel. Another painting of the Skagit River - this one is on display at the Allied Arts exhibit in Bellingham through this Saturday.

Mt. Baker from Margaret's. ©2010 Lisa McShane. Oil on Linen Panel. 9" x 12". Mt. Baker from Margaret's will be in Art + All That Jazz , a benefit for Whatcom Museum. It's one night only: Friday, November 12 from 6-9 pm. If you're in Bellingham, please come! There will be amazing art for purchase. This is a plein air painting - different from my studio work. This was painted in Skagit Valley looking at Mt. Baker to the northeast on a sunny afternoon. When you watch Mt. Baker in the light of the Skagit Valley, it changes color about every 5 minutes.

River of Gold. ©2010 Lisa McShane. 12" x 20". Oil on Linen Panel. I've been working on about 10 paintings for more than a month now, painting, glazing, scumbling, day after day. Yesterday 5 of them were complete. When it rains it pours. This one was started in August after seeing the Skagit River turn to liquid gold as the sun set behind it. You can see another version, Summer Night, Skagit River, here . This is a painting that I often talked with studio visitors about during the recent studio tour. It's striking and people were drawn to it but there was something about it that was missing for me. This past week I made the darks darker, glazed the bottom of the river in a red/orange/purple, and added sunlight in a few more places. Now it works.

Summer Night, Skagit River. Oil on Linen Panel. 12" x 20" This summer I drove north through Skagit County a number of times. That's common. It's between me and eastern Washington, the Columbia River and Seattle. For some reason I kept making that drive right when the sun was setting over the river, turning it to gold. One time I was driving with my son and apologized, because I had to get off at the next exit to watch the river. His reply? Said with a smile: Sure, I thought you'd want to stop. This is called Summer Night, Skagit River but I think of it as 'After Paris, Skagit River' because it was what I learned from Deborah Paris that enabled me to capture what I saw.

Todd Horton painting on the front porch of the Smith & Vallee Gallery in Edison Todd Horton is an artist in Bow who paints wonderful paintings of animals and landscapes. I covet his enigmatic paintings of owls , deer and fox . Friday afternoon I stopped by the Smith and Valley Gallery with my friend Kristin to see the current show and Todd was there manning the place. He was working on a painting for an upcoming group show, 'Birds', and as he was painting, a chickadee was flying around. Perfect. Smith & Vallee Gallery is one of my favorites in this region. They bring in strong artists for exceptional shows in a beautiful, light-filled space. What's not to love about that? Open gallery night in Edison is the first Saturday of the month and it's always fun. There are two galleries, two amazing bakeries, several restaurants and one great saloon with a lot of motorcycles in front. For gallery night the small town fills with an eclectic assortment of art lov...

House in the Fog. Oil on Linen. 20" x 16". So! Yesterday I asked whether or not I should craft better titles for my paintings and decided to title this one, House in the Fog , rather than Alger Fog 2 . (Why yes, there's an Alger Fog 1 , see it here .) Yes, titles! This is a painting I began in January but struggled with it a bit. So I hung it on the studio wall and started the smaller Alger Fog 1 . This is clearly an image I wanted to tackle and work through. I'm happy with Alger Fog 1 and it sold quickly at the '4 Women, 4 Seasons' show at the Blue Horse Gallery. My struggle with this one was with the surface. I was using one of Utrecht's acrylic primed stretched linens and it has a couple of issues: it has some bristles stuck in the primer and it is very, very, very absorbent. I was so annoyed with it that I wrote about it here . But you know, once there's a certain number of layers of glaze and scumbling, that all falls by the wayside. Now that i...

Landscape with a Bare Tree. Oil on Canvas. 14" x 30". This scene near Edison, Washington caught my attention because it reminded me so vividly of a painting I saw this summer in the Getty. You can see the 19th century image here . This is a place I'll be returning to for future paintings.

Alger Fog. Oil on Linen Panel. 9" x 12". SOLD . Still love the fog. This time I approached the painting as if it was fog. I painted the landscape and then glazed over a number of times with transparent gray fog. Denser fog over the hill, less fog over the wetlands.

/> Original sketch for Anacortes Gap. I visited the area in December in preparation for the painting. The other sketches looked like they'd work as paintings but didn't. Underpainting for Anacortes Gap. It was very dark and so I sanded it down aggressively and chunks of paint came off. I decided to start a second to experiment with the same glazing, only with different values in the underpainting. (Values are the relative lights and dark.) This is now the one I call Anacortes Gap 1 and it's 14" x 11" on stretched canvas with 3 coats of acrylic gesso. Underpainting for Anacortes Gap 2. As you can see, it's much lighter. This one is painted on a lead primed fine linen panel which posed it's own set of challenges as the painting went on. This is Anacortes Gap 2 after about 3 or 4 layers of glaze. You can see it's darkening quickly despite the light underpainting! This is Anacortes Gap 2 today. Dark and mysterious. Anacortes Gap 1, after several initia...

Skagit Morning. Oil on Linen Panel. 8" x 10". This is another painting that is part of my exploration into Tonalism. Simple painting, soft and indistinct edges. One of the important qualities about Tonalism is soft edges. This is a style that followed a hard edged period in art and in contrast, the artists used an exceptional softness in their paint application. I've always used hard edges. Early on in my painting I was most influenced by Wayne Thiebaud and I love his built-up edges, often highlighted with bright colors. Cadmium red! Cobalt blue! I was attracted to the emphasis and lack of subtlety. But this past couple of years, when I visited museums what I photographed most were the lovely, interesting edges. The depth of the soft transitions between planes. So I'm thinking about my edges now and experimenting with a softer approach.

These are two paintings I've been working on for 4 weeks. They began the same week in early January as underpaintings for my Luminous Landscape class with Deborah Paris (great class BTW!) The top one is 14" x 11 and is on canvas. The first underpainting was way too dark. So I sanded it down. The bottom on is 12" x 9" and is on Wind River Art's lead primed portrait linen. The underpainting was quite light. I've continued to glaze these each day and now they're nearly identical! Of late the glazing has focused on the right side, on conveying the quality of light filtered through the cedar boughs. One of these will be in the upcoming show: 4 Women, 4 Seasons, at the Blue Horse Gallery. I don't know which one yet. Although neither one is finished yet, I'd love your thoughts on which one is more succesful!

Skagit Fields. Oil on Linen Panel. 6" x 8". Yay! Ruthie V and I made it past our first month of daily paintings. I say past because I forgot to mark the red letter day when we achieved this major milestone, just as I almost forgot to start the project. It was only when I received Ruthie's email with her first Daily Painting on January 1st that I scrambled, grabbed a slice of pie , and painted it. But yes, today is February 4th so yay! We both have had some hiccups/angst/exhaustion along the way as a Daily Painting Challenge is, well, challenging, but it's a good discipline. Two evenings ago I was walking home from the library with my husband and he said 'Well you made it, your month of Daily Paintings is over, that's great!" I said, "yes....but it's a year-long challenge. There are 11 more months." He was shocked. "But I don't want 365 small paintings in our house". LOL -clearly I need to get busy with finding homes for my D...

March Point at Dusk. Oil on Linen Panel. 9" x 12". This is a view of March Point at dusk, looking across the frozen fields of Skagit County. For those of you from northwest Washington, this is a classic view. I've always found it to be beautiful. I painted this while taking my class on Tonalism and it was created with many, many layers of thin glazes. This is indirect painting with transparent glazes and I find it to much more challenging than direct painting with it's quicker, more vigorous (luscious! buttery!) opaque paint. These are layers of thin paint, barely tinted, that sit on the surface and after many layers, build up to a dark, simple yet deep paint. The smoke, lights and sky are scumbled with semi-opaque paint in order to give it the contrast I wanted. You can see the earlier versions of this painting here and here .

Today Dan had a geology job site to visit along the Samish River in Sagit County so I went along. After a week of sunshine and bitter cold, it was cloudy and thus less visually interesting. I practiced with my new camera then read Bram Stoker's Dracula on my iPhone. We made a second stop to check out a flood control project in the South Fork of the Nooksack River and the sun was starting to come out. The banks of the river were iced, the bare trees were flooded with sun and lit up against the dark clouds to the west. It was beautiful. As we left we saw 3 wild turkeys and stopped to watch them. They are crazy creatures. Like little dinosauers walking around and around our car. This big one was especially interested in us.