Morning on the Dock

The Red Canoes

The Shed

More Plein Air 
   





Thanks to a wonderful partnership between the Roswell Fine Arts Alliance (to which I belong) and the Chattahoochee Nature Center, each week I paint with several other artists at beautiful sites throughout the Center's grounds.  Although painting in solitude is meditative and rewarding, painting with others who share my love of nature is also very enjoyable.
Experimenting with color, shapes, texture and style make each trip out a new adventure.  Returning to the same location and finding a new view insures that each painting is unique.  The biggest challenge this summer has been to find a way to add variety to all that GREEN! 

 New Directions
         Always in search of new ways to combine all the media that I work with, I decided to combine two of my favorites -- collage and printmaking.  The technique is actually an old one called Collography, invented in 1955.   Basically, it is making prints from collages.

<---- this is the collographic plate on which I incised the lines of the figures, then added the pieces of textured collage.  The plate was then inked and the image printed.  Notice the image is reversed in the print.

<---- this is the print that was produced with no additional media added.  As you can see, there are gaps in the drawing that make it seem unfinished.  My next step will involve drawing, painting and perhaps adding pastels to enhance the existing print.  Stay tuned for the next addition.

Sanctuary

 PLEIN AIR PAINTING
        It's been a very long time since I've updated my blog and a lot has happened in that time.  I'm glad to be back and hope to be more faithful to updating in the future.  The paintings at the left were painted "en plein air" (on location) during a recent trip to Florida.  Plein air paintings are not meant to be finished studio works, instead they are immediate, spontaneous responses to wherever the artist happens to be.  I was raised in Florida and love to go back whenever possible.  I'm always drawn to the beaches where it is a challenge to find something to paint in addition to sand, sky and water.

Tracks in the Sand

        Although the piece of driftwood in the top painting is the focal point, what really caught my attention was the bird sanctuary on the sandbar in the background.

        The second painting looks at though it's been a long time since a vehicle traveled this path but in reality, right after I started painting, a "herd" of kayakers brought their boats down to the water on clever two-wheeled carts.  Maybe I'll paint them in another piece.
        View of Don Cesar was actually the first "warm-up" piece that I painted, of a famous old landmark on Pass-a-grille Beach in St. Petersburg, Florida.  The clouds were especially dramatic as there was a very brisk wind blowing that morning. I hope to be painting en plein air all summer and will post as I go.
                                                        

View of Don Cesar

 VISIT MY NEW WEBSITE:
www.hardageart.com

Catch the Wind was an interesting project.  I had just begun experimenting with painting with a credit card and I knew I wanted to use a blue/orange color scheme.  As I started making marks on the paper, I realized that it had a nautical "feel".  I was especially intrigued by the feeling of heavy waves that the bottom portion of the painting seemed to evoke.  With this concept in mind, I pictured sailboats in a neck and neck race to the finish line, if they could only "catch that big gust of wind".  It was great fun to see if I could suggest this feeling without actually producing realistic looking sailboats.  Oh, and painting with a credit card is even more  fun than buying something with it.

Catch the Wind