Eric Deeter, painter, at one time professional jazz and blues piano man, carpenter, and gourmet cook of Alaska wild salmon.  I have mentioned Eric Deeter in numerous blogs; in fact, Eric is the artist who challenged me to do a self-portrait which was the subject of an earlier article, simply titled The Challenge of the Self-Portrait, as well as the master-mind behind The House That Artists Built.

 I had the pleasure of making Eric Deeter's acquaintance in 2006 at a gallery reception at which we both were exhibiting in Anchorage Alaska.

Before we actually met, I saw his work in the gallery, and it had such an emotional impact on me that I was compelled to stand before it, allowing it to become part of my 'universe', for lack of a more descriptive word. One piece in particular was a large acrylic on panel of a mountaineer leading his mule.  The atmosphere around him appears to be a snow or ice-fog.



Later that year, Eric Deeter and I met again when we were both being interviewed on a televised benefit for PBS.  The piece he was exhibiting was a large watercolour of an Alaskan Native man bringing a tea cup to his lips.  One would guess that it is a hot drink he is about to imbibe as the motion of his fur jacket implies howling winds, and one would hope the liquid in the cup is warming.



Having relocated from the Seattle area, Eric, along with his young son and wife Gretchen, a school teacher and accomplished poet, lived in the bush communities of Alaska for a number of years, and there, many subjects presented themselves for interpretation into a body of paintings.  Deeter was working primarily in watercolour at this time.  A few years later, they settled in the Matanuska Valley where he began painting with acrylics, finding them to be a good medium for his layered colours and quick drying time.

In 2007, I had the opportunity to work with Eric and the Alaska Plein Air Society group of artists.  Eric had just begun painting with oils, and his colours became richer and more transparent, much like his watercolours, just with more paint.

In watching Eric Deeter work, I have been reminded more than once of Pierre Bonnard, the French Post-Impressionist.  Like Bonnard, Deeter creates his paintings in a format which allows him to cut some off if it improves the composition.  Bonnard would tack a large piece of canvas to the wall, paint and scrape paint back off, leaving the texture of the canvas visible, and if the format did not suit him, he would cut some off, or add a piece on.  Bonnard did not paint from life however, which Eric Deeter does primarily.  Like Bonnard, Deeter does not rely on an inflexible colour scheme, relying instead on personal experience and what each individual painting dictates.  In other words, his painting methods are not formulaic, but leave room for experimentation and personal expression.

One thing he does do consistenly however, from my observation, is 'plug in' all of his warm colours, usually a muted orange, and then cools them down with grayed blues and greens, leaving the warmer colours sparkling through and around the cooler strokes.  This creates a kind of optical dance on the canvas, and the paintings glow from within, creating their own light. 

In late fall, 2007, Eric took a trip to Nepal to capture the essence of the people and culture there, as many artists have done before him.  He has created a body of work from this trip which I feel not only captures the spirituality of Nepal, but also the very air.  Deeter uses as few brushstrokes and employs as little detail as possible to imply reality and a sense of motion and life within his subjects.   All of his paintings tell a story, and leave enough to the imagination of the viewer to make a complete communication, the give and take of it.  What are they doing, what kind of life must they lead etc., are all questions one could pose looking at any of Eric Deeter's paintings. He has a passion for life and it shows in his work.

Eric Deeter is a young artist whom I feel has a bright future.

Some of Deeter's smaller Alaska and Nepal paintings will be on exhibition in Seattle, Washington through October 2008, at The Fountainhead Gallery . Here are a few of the pieces which will be on display there, and if you are in the area, or even make a point to be, you won't be disappointed.














...and a painting he did of yours truly.  Diann Haist painting en plein air.

You are invited to visit Eric Deeter's web site to learn more about him and see more of his work.

Well, this same artist friend challenged me to do a self-portrait too, which
I have done, and while doing it, realized that I have now created
three, ten or twenty years separating them.  Rembrandt did one every
ten years or so, and we can see how he aged. I think it's a good
exercise for self as well as posterity.

The first in my personal series of three was created in 1978.  I was
painting a lot of birds at the time, they just seemed to show up in
most of my paintings, not as subjects themselves, but just there
somewhere.  When I realized this, I saw myself as a 'feather-head' and
created this image with my hair made up of birds.  The title fittingly
is "Featherhead' and is acrylic on an 18" x 24" wood panel.














In 1998, I was sitting at my desk doodling with conte crayon and
charcoal in a large lovely new sketchpad.  On the wall in front of me
was a mirror, so a sketch of myself was a handy thing to do, not for a
moment thinking of doing a formal self-portrait.  I was un-posed and
comfortable drawing what was in front of me.


















My latest humble self-portrait, painted 15 April 2008, I have chosen to call
"That Which Defines me - Kind Of". This is oil on 16" x 20" panel.  It was quite an exercise working
out the allegory for this one, the defineing story - just what do I do
which defines most who I am?  I paint!  Of course there are other
things as well, which will perhaps be my subject for the next
self-portrait.  Hopefully before another ten or twenty years have
passed.   My face isn't really quite this round....:)















Happy Painting.

Christmas Eve, and I wish all of you the very best for this Holiday Season and
a creatively productive 2008 in all of your endeavors. 

This past year has been full of surprises for us; wonderful new people
met, as well as learning how to build a house from scratch - see my
blog entry of September 2007 'The House That Artists Built". We have
experienced galleries changing, old friends retiring, art students having their first group exhibition to rave reviews, and painting more often with the Alaska Plein Air artists. 

This is where the subject of this blog comes in.  Just why is this painting called a surprise?

Well, Friday's usual outing with the Plein Air group was at one of the
artists homes, a beautiful sprawling log house up on the hillside with
a fantastic view of city lights in the distance.  It was also a Christmas party of sorts, creative gifts were exchanged, with lots of homemade cookies and other goodies shared. 

It was quite cold outside and there was an ice-fog which made the trees look like something out of a fairy tale.



Because quite a few of the artists paint with acrylic and watercolour,
it was pretty much decided that we would work indoors from the many
large picture windows throughout the house.  I was a bit late in
setting up my easel because of a good conversation, and because there
were so many of us painting on this day, there was only one spot left -
behind everyone in a dark corner by the fireplace.  We could have
set up a lamp, but the challange of painting what was directly in front
of me, with my canvas and palette in the dim recesses of the room,
really piqued my curiosity of what might come out of it.

Knowing I needed at least one of each of the primary colours, I
groped in my paint box and pulled them out, seeing only the bands of
colour on the tubes.  Not completely certain whether it was cad
yellow pale, light or med, and probably had cad red light.  The
blue was ultramarine for sure, plus viridian.  White was easy to
see.  Well, setting about getting the gestures of the two artists
directly in front of me, backlit by a lamp and a window, and standing
in front of a piano, all set up with Christmas sheet music, I quickly
set out to capture the 'feel' and energy they were putting into their
work.  Of course they were moving quite a bit, but it was fun to
mix my colours arbitrarily and get it on the canvas quickly, without
hesitation.

When it was as completed as it could be, I moved it into the light of
the window and was quite surprised to see how bright it was, and the
tonal values read quite well.  Because it was so dim where it was
being worked on, the values needed to be in a higher-key range for me
to judge anything at all.  That is why this little piece is called
"Surprise Painting", as I had no idea just how well it was coming along
until it was done and viewed with a natural light source.  In
fact, this is something I would like to do occasionally for
practice.  While not a 'masterpiece' by any stretch of the
imagination, I was pleased to get what did come out of this.

While working on this painting, I thought of Michelangelo sculpting
into the night with candles attached to his hat.  Just goes to
show you - an artist can work just about anywhere in just about any
situation. 

Til next time. 

The air is quite cold, the ground cushion of fallen leaves wet.  I can easily recall the clean woodsy smell as I write this.  All is quiet with nothing to distract from concentrating on the view in front of me. The geese have left the area, not even a duck swims by.  Fingers need to be shaken a few times to keep the blood circulating, and a thermos of steaming coffee is welcome at intervals.

Although no more than two hours was spent at this quiet spot, I came away with a sense of being part of nature, able to participate with it, and if nothing else, to truly appreciate it.

Over the years I have found that painting in the open air has helped my studio work immensely.  One must be able to capture nature quickly as the scene changes rapidly before your eyes.  This day was not quite as hurried as there was cloud-cover with a mist of fine rain saturating the ochres and siennas of the dried grasses. 

It will be snowing the next time I am able to get out here, and I am looking forward to putting prussian blue on my palette.

No picture on this subject today because the composition that went wrong is now under a nice layer of soupy grey oil paint by way of a toner for the next painting.

Friday's plein air painting trip with the Alaska Plein Air Painters group started off on a goofy note for me.  Thinking of lightening my carrying load of French Easel and duffle bag with the necessary supplies of rags, water, lunch, coffee etc, I strapped it all to a little rolling cart, the kind used for carrying luggage, with a bungy cord.  Because the wheels are rather large and sturdy, my logic told me that this would probably be good enough to travel over some rough terrain.  What I did not anticipate was a lot of deep mud on the trails. This became like dragging 100 pounds up hill, and once it completely toppled over, flinging coffee cup and some palette knives and brushes into the wet leaves and said mud.  Finding most of them, but not all, and stuffing them back in the kit, off I went a bit further to where we set up to paint. 

It was a truly gorgeous day, a bit overcast but not raining.  The
fall colours reflected in the lake were perfect, and three of us set up among some trees right at the edge of the water.  My interest was mostly in the reflections of a bent tree stump close to my vantage point, with some of the reflections from the far shore behind it.  One really should not have trees positioned on both edges of the canvas, but I went ahead and roughed them in anyway, hmm.  My colours were working alright, but things just kept going wrong, such as perspectives and whatnot.  At the end of the day, I had a ho-hum painting. 

I recalled what one of my art professors, Doris McCarthy, used to drill home to us - that " If you have a good composition and a sound drawing, you can practically throw paint on the canvas and still have a good painting".  Also, if things are going wrong, first check the composition.   Usually I heed her advice, but not on this day.

Later in the studio, I evaluated what was done, and decided that what I got out of doing it wrongly was as valuable as coming away with something with promise.  I was done with this piece and scraped it off, then painted over it with leftovers from my palette.  It's ready for the next one, hopefully better.

It has been a very busy summer indeed, and now that Fall is here, there is time to reflect on just how much was accomplished.  Plein Air painting trips of course, but the most important and rewarding experience was a good old-fashioned barn-raising!  It happened like this.

Two artist friends, a couple, needed to have their log house completed before winter set in, as they have two very important museum exhibitions to get work together for, and they were behind the eight ball on the two old cliches - time and enough money.  A group of mutual friends, all artists, decided to help them out since their main objective was to work for the exhibitions quickly, plus have a warm place to spend the winter in.  Since snow-fall was fast approaching, (this was July & August, and snow where they live can come in September), it was decided to build a smaller cabin which could later be a new workshop/studio once the bigger house was done next year.  So, we set about it over a few weekends.

Painters, sculptors, doll-makers, writers, and all-round good guys set about wielding hammers, saws and drills with energy and intention.  One sculptor friend who just happened to be visiting us at the time, Laury Dizengremel, award winning sculptor, http://www.sculpture-design.com/, came along and applied skilled muscle to pounding nails and packing insulation.

The mastermind behind the carpentery and design of the building was Eric Deeter, http://www.deeterworks.com   a good friend and fine fine painter.  He orchestrated the building materiel, and choreographed the helpers like a dance instructor.

Since I have a cooking background, yours truly became the camp cook. Meals cooked on an open fire such as fresh caught wild Alaska salmon with lemon & dill, chicken breast marinated in white wine, lemon juice, garlic, olive oil & sea salt, were a bit challenging - no way to control the heat on this one, so much watching and moving took place.  Denise packed shish kebab skewers with good beef chunks and fresh veggies.  Shrimp steamed in foil with garlic and butter and sea salt was really good. Of course the toasted baguette and roasted garlic with some great wine wasn't too shabby either.  Do we like garlic?

After dinner the work resumed until it became too dark to see the nails.  By then, the campfire was large, permitting light and warmth to the quickly chilling night.  We all sat in lawn chairs and talked until it was time to sleep and look forward to getting in another good day's work.  Some of us slept in campers, others in backseats of cars and vans, and others in tents.  

This also is in a bush environment, and there was a sow grizzly bear skirting the property.  She is evidently there frequently, and apparently quite large.  I didn't see her personally, but heard the loud cracking of brush from time to time.  As there is no in-door plumbing in this 'neck-of-the-woods', it was an adventure to say the least.  

When the first walls were securely up, we all signed one of the posts - for posterity.  The House That Artists Built.

  Making the floor.


  Raising the Frame.


Wall frames are up.


  Artists signed the house.


  Roofing.


  Roasting salmon on an open fire.


  Sirloin & a side of nails.



               The House That Artists Built.

This past weekend, I and another artist friend, Eric Deeter, were
invited to paint with the Plein Air Painters of Alaska as 'special
guest artists', along with several others.  Each year this
illustrious group hosts an entire weekend of plein air painting and exhibition with works for sale.  We were honored to be working with Alaska's best - Betty Atkinson, Thor Brandt Ericksen, James Belcher, Lynn Boots, Nancy Brandt Ericksen, Bob Hansen (President of the Alaska Artists Guild), Teri Jo Hedman, Don Kolstad, Joe Nedland, Andy Sonneborn, Jean Shadrack, Dorothy Thompson, and Marianne Wieland.


The weather was bright sunny and hot, the tents sparkled in the
sunlight, and the attendance was fabulous.  Parents brought their children to watch the artists, and one 4 year old thought a dab of my white paint on his nose would be art too! 


The bright sunlight on the red white & blue tents reminded me of the brilliant colours at a carnival, or maybe even conjured up visions of a jousting match - of course no jousting here, so I set up my easel with needed umbrella, and began to paint.  These are my beginning marks to establish basic colour and values.  It took about 3 1/2 hours to complete, as there was quite a crowd most of the time, questions welcomed and answered liberally.



While I was painting tents, Eric Deeter was painting me!  A lovely impressionist piece and a good reminder of a wonderful day.

 

The challenges facing a plein air painter, especially a novice, are
more than relentless insects out for blood, or being on constant
lookout for predators such as bears if one has set up one's easel in their neighborhood.  In places such as Alaska or British Columbia, any mountainous region, it is wise to go in groups of two or more, and be armed with a good stout whistle as well as bear spray.

These challenges however are more easily overcome sometimes than what and how to paint that which is all around you in the wilds.  It's easy to become confused with detail and end up with mud and something very disappointing on the canvas. Of course, the little viewfinder cut out of mat board or even a frame made with fingers helps isolate the scene to concentrate on.

A limited palette also helps keep things simple - my palette of choice on painting trips is ultramarine blue, cadmium yellow pale, permanent alizarin crimson and titanium white, and frequently these will be Winsor Newton Artisan Water-mixable oils.  One student recently gave herself a tough time by only bringing a palette of colours she had never used before.  The old adage of never cooking something you have not tried before for company, is applicable in begining plein air painting
as well I believe.  Work with the materials you know.

I did this little five minute demo for a class recently on how to just look at what is there, and not go into thinking about it.  Look for the shapes of light and dark, warm and cool colours and put them where they are.  Simplify shapes and use a large brush, not worrying about small details.  Get the feel of the scene, then one could go back and punch up where needed, adding smaller shapes of warm or cool colours on top of the larger masses.  When doing a longer study, of course the finished painting would have more finesse, but the main idea is still to see what is there and not analyze it too much. 
Look, don't think.    Magic.

Within the next few days, new small paintings and general dialogue will be posted here.  For many years I have encouraged students of art to do quick studies from life, and at least one small painting per day. I have also practiced this advice myself and this is where I will be posting some of them.

Till then...........