Lisa McShane Art

Fields of Lucania. ©2014, Oil on Linen. 20" x 30". I am drawn to views of golden fields and skies. Simple farmland. I paint these over and over and sometimes I hesitate to show people. These paintings don't usually sell and it's clear to me now that these are images I paint just for myself. Practicing skies? Maybe. Thinking through light and atmosphere? Sure. Playing with shapes and composition? A little. But to me there's just something about these sweeping views of simple things. This one is in Basilicata, southern Italy, where we saw beautiful fields of wheat grown on a smaller scale than we're used to in Washington State.

Palouse Road. ©2012 Lisa McShane. Oil on Linen. 36" x 50". I always have a painting of a road in progress in my studio. Now that this one is done, I'll be starting another one soon. This is the Palouse, an area of rolling hills in southeastern Washington. My cousin's wheat farm in Connell is on the very edge of the Palouse; the rolling hills are at their most distinct just north of Walla Walla. The soils are very productive for wheat and wine grapes and the patterns those crops create on the landscape add to the feeling that the entire world is rolling.

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.

Study for Wheat 1. ©2011 Lisa McShane. Oil on Linen. 8" x 8". This Friday, 6-8pm, is the opening of Invitational Small Works Exhibit at Roby King Galleries on Bainbridge. If you're in the area I hope you'll stop by! Study for Wheat 1 is one of several small studies I spent months with over the spring, summer and into September. I paint a great many paintings of fields, especially wheat fields, and have struggled with them. Deborah Paris made some suggestions last spring and I diligently went to work trying them out. Study for Wheat 1 was a back and forth process of opaque paint with thin, transparent paint glazed over and wiped off.

East Fields at Dusk. ©2011 Lisa McShane. Oil on Linen Panel. 12 x 24". The wide open fields of eastern Washington, looking west towards the Cascade Mountains at dusk. This is just north of my family's wheat farm in an area that's simple and stark. The interplay of light, clouds and fields have a subtle beauty.

Harvest, Blue Mountains. ©2011 Lisa McShane. Oil on Linen Panel. 24" x 36". It's cold out now but I'm still painting the harvest and late summer light. This is of the patterns left by combine tracks in the wheat stubble. I started a book the other night about George Inness and enjoyed reading about his process and the extent to which he worked his paintings - layering and adding texture. It was a comfort because I've been working on the same few paintings for a couple of months now - layering and adding texture.

Field of Gold. Oil on Linen Panel. 12 x 16. Art is interesting. Sometimes you start something and believe it will be good from the first sketch to the last brush stroke. Then sometimes a painting takes you by surprise and in doing so, takes your breath away. I've been working on this painting since early April. Well actually, I've been working to paint this simple, simple image since early 2009. This is probably the 5th painting of this same concept - none of the others survived. So in early April I thought I'd try again. And from the very beginning it again wasn't working. The strokes weren't right, the simple composition was too plain, the colors muddy. So I took it with me to the workshop in Texas so I could talk it over with Deborah Paris. She suggested I lower the horizon. I did. She also suggested I not make horizontal strokes for the grass. She and I walked to the edge of the field to look at the grass and talk about how it looks in the distance. I still was ...

Clouds and Fields. Oil on Canvas. 30 x 40. My website went live today! Please visit it at www.lisamcshane.com . Those of you with websites know that this meant a lot of work to get it together and up but it was a labor of love. I actually like things like databases and websites. I decided to go with an online art template company, called Foliolink. It's been a good experience. They have helpful people ready and willing to chat with me on the phone. I like the work of the other artists I see there. The templates were great and - very important to me - iPhone compatible. Back to the painting. This is Clouds and Fields from the Road to Asotin series. There's a lot of movement.

Big Hills, Palouse. 30 x 36. Oil on Canvas. I finished this painting Saturday. It's from my Road to Asotin series and is one of my favorites from the series. I've been working on this for more than two months. And by working on it, I mean it's been hanging in the studio while I worked on many other paintings, and occasionally looked at it long and hard to figure out what more to do. Saturday I added more definition to the hills, decided I liked it loose, lush and fairly thin, and then photographed it today. I think it captures the early morning light in a narrow valley of the Palouse at harvest.

Three Trees in the Palouse. Oil on Canvas. 18 x 24. This is a study for a larger painting and its one I think worked well. This is from an area in eastern Washington, near Uniontown. Its a terrific little town with a bakery and a saloon - cool and refreshing on a hot August day - that serves homemade potato chips. Delicious. I'm on the east coast visiting my daughter and we have reservations tomorrow morning to visit the Barnes Foundation, just outside Philadelphia. I can't wait!

Field of Wheat - 14 x 28 - Oil on Canvas This is a painting I finished about a month ago, in the Road to Asotin series. The Palouse at wheat harvest has an amazing light quality. I'm happy with how this one turned out.