Just add water

 

 

Officially into summer now, I'm sticking with the Adirondacks for the next little while.  With the "Empty Frame Series" introduced last time, I'll be exploring little known artists of the 19^th/early 20^th century who painted there – and at the same time, I'll have some summer camp fun by experimenting with different media.

 

This post's subject is Homer Dodge Martin, looking like a successful businessman here.

 

 

He died not only in obscurity, but in poverty, ill heath and blindness – yet his mellow landscape paintings are in the collections of many prominent American museums, including the Met, the Smithsonian and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

 

With a nod to Martin's 4-year sojourn in France, and a nudge from "Portrait Revolution",  I decided to do his portrait in intensely coloured pastel chalks.  It's about time I put a dent in my 35-year-old supply of these legendary art tools, most of them handpicked by me from huge trays at Sennelier Paris.

 

 

An important health protocol has evolved around the use of soft pastels.  Because they're essentially powdered pigment plus water, it can be harmful to work indoors without plenty of ventilation and even to directly contact some colours with bare hands.

 

 

My euphoria about reuniting with my colour trays led to a quick session outdoors in the cool air of morning – and a quick take on the subject, with an irresistible polka-dot tie. Here's "Framed – Homer Dodge Martin."

 

Now, on to his own painting, "Adirondack Landscape."   Was the "some old thing" that my mother discarded from the carved frame something like this?

 

 

From my photo archives, I found a suitable companion piece – the creek below Shannon Falls, just off the Sea to Sky Highway.

 

Thinking about landscape artists I like, I suddenly thought of Canadian artist David Milne, who has his own Adirondack connection.  I'd first fallen for him via a 2^nd-hand book purchase, and my enthusiasm was confirmed by a huge 2017 retrospective at the Vancouver Art Gallery.  Now I had the idea to try to replicate my mountain stream in his style.  As I browsed his paintings, I found…was it possible, this similar subject? -- "Black Waterfall."

 

What fascinates me about Milne's style is his use of pronounced line and blocks of colour – this looked oh-so-easy and self-evident, but it was not.  It's a very different manner of working, and I felt stumped at almost every turn, constantly asking, "What would David Milne do?"  It took me hours to get to this point, and then I stalled for three weeks. 

 

 

I was about to call it quits and then decided….what the heck, I'll plug in a dark background.  So here's the finale of "Milne Creek" – the Empty Frame Series, copyright 2023.

 

There is so much wrong with this finished piece, and it is so quirky, that I've actually become rather fond of it.  The challenge itself certainly gave me plenty of scope for reflection.