The Duke of Manchester

Posted by Aline on August 4, 2017

So, what are we going to do now?

This is Milo. He has been living with me ever since my granddaughter brought him home about three years ago. He is one of five cats living with me. I have the Diva aka Isis The White Goddess, Blue the Fearless Scientist who is also King of his domain, a timid little bit of fluff called Grace who modeled for my gigantic portrait of her (Nap, Interrupted), and the Elder Stateman called Freckles, now 13 years old. Milo has lately inspired more paintings that the rest of them altogether.

The first painting of Milo shows him with his pal Blue the Explorer, in a piece I call “Partners in Crime”. Blue is on top; Milo, on bottom.

2. Partners in Crime

The next Milo picture is this full head shot, which I later had transferred by Fine Art America to a pillow for said Granddaughter, who left it behind when she moved out. Granddaughters of a certain age care only about their social network and their appearance.

Milo picture no. 3 is the regal pose I opened with. Milo is a cool cat, alert but relaxed. He is always looking at me, checking out my reaction, hoping for a lap to snuggle in. When he finds such a lap, he purrs and becomes very hard to dislodge. Milo does have a flaw, however. He likes to chase the girls (Diva and Grace) and make them cry. Well, Isis caterwauls and Grace hides.

Finally, I made up a series featuring Milo. The idea (not mine actually but my teacher Peter Dixon’s) was to use the same reference photo for 3 to 5 different paintings, forcing myself to employ different techniques for each one. All were to be Oil paintings sized 9×12, but the treatments were to be unusual, new and untried by me. The first three are complete:

realistic treatment

purplish cat, streamlined forms

abstracted cat

I started two more, but I’m not ready to let you judge them.

Thinking outside the box when you don’t have a clue what exists outside that box — is hard! The last one, the abstract one, was fun to do, but I had no idea whether it was going to be good once it was finished. Turns out–I like it a lot. But I don’t know that I can ever do it again. I will try. Is this how the great abstract artists of the mid 20th century started out? Almost all of them first learned how to draw and paint realistically, traditionally. Probably most tried to jump on the abstraction wagon but many just couldn’t stomach it. The latter are the artists who kept traditional, realistic painting respectable for folks like me.

Exhibiting

Posted by Aline on February 11, 2017

I haven’t written a blog for two months. I have thought about it a lot, but what to write about?

(1) It’s winter, and dreary sunless winter most of the time.

(2) I can’t go to Florida for my usual reinvigoration because I’m working at tax returns in order to support my art habit.

(3) As I get older, it seems as if everything I do has to take longer. Five times longer. I have turned into a snail.

As a result of all those factors, forget about blogging. . . I haven’t even been painting!

Two months–that’s December and January, and little bit of February, assuming I finish this start and publish it today or tomorrow. During those months I was busy with a different aspect of the profession of art making. I was exhibiting. So I’m hoping that’s a subject that might be amusing for artists and non artists alike, especially since so much of that was compressed in that stretch of time.

There are two kinds of exhibiting: juried and not juried. For the juried ones, the process starts with the application or “entry”. The artist obtains decent photographs of the artwork and sends the images electronically to the juror(s). For the unjuried ones, the artist usually need only identify each piece by title and size. For all of them, the artist must consider the logistics of getting artwork to the place of exhibit, and then getting pieces back home at the end of the exhibit.

Entering multiple exhibits requires some basic record keeping. You don’t want to put forward the same painting in different, overlapping exhibits. You can’t deliver paintings to two locations at the same time. You can’t deliver paintings when you are tied up at work either. Friends and families are helpful in this regard.

I was particularly busy with the business of art these past few months. Maybe because I was not getting many rejections, a turn of events devoutly to be thankful for. The effort required for me to keep all my exhibit balls in the air sapped my energy to actually keep painting–with the exceptions of commissions of pet portraits and the re-creation of lost paintings. Yes, on two occasions I submitted photographs of paintings that I could not find! But let’s go back to the beginning.

In November, I responded to a call for art from a Boston gallery, the Bromfield, for smallish pieces to go in their annual Winter Show. I have never exhibited in Boston before, so I decided to go for it. Of 4 images submitted, 2 were accepted. Both were 8×10 rather abstracted landscapes involving water. Lake’s Edge, which was on my wall and on my business card; and Water Layers, which I distinctly remember seeing when I was offering 8×10’s for $100 each in Littleton’s Art Festival. But I could not find Water Layers in any of my home places for stacking older paintings. Thank goodness I tried to find it right after getting the acceptance, because that barely gave me enough time to paint a copy of it from my photograph of it. Oil dries slowly.

Water Layers, 8×10, plein air, half hour painting at Baboosic Brook in Merrimack NH

The exhibit at the Bromfield Gallery required three trips to Boston: one to deliver; one to attend the opening; and one to pick up at the end of the show. I took a friend with me each time because venturing into SoWa (South of Washington) arts district alone intimidated this boondocks artist. Yvonne, another artist, accompanied me on the first and third trips. It wasn’t the neighborhood that intimidated me; it was the traffic and fear of accidentally getting on the Mass. Turnpike, because that has happened to me before when trying to find something in the South End. Parking in the neighborhood of the Gallery was also a challenge better handled with another person riding shotgun. Alas, all of our good luck in finding the place and scoring a parking place got washed out by a blowout of one of my snow tires as I was pulling into a dubious corner space. I had rammed my poor tire into a sewer grate. AAA to the rescue. Yvonne missed a delivery of a turkey to her front porch back in Manchester. Come to think of it, I guess I owe her a turkey. Just glad I was not alone!

The middle trip, the one to the opening, was pretty darn delightful. My friend from grade school in Wilmington Delaware, Jackie, accompanied me. There was a Christmas crafts fair going on, and all of the galleries at 450 Harrison Street too, as was usual on the First Friday of a month. As soon as we got here, about five o’clock, Jackie and I allowed ourselves to be seduced by a restaurant called 500 in Italian. Cinquecento. As we were investigating the menu posted outside, passersby stopped to encourage us and even advised which meal to order. Since we did not have a competing agenda, we went for it and ending up spending a boatload of money, mostly for a carafe of wine that cost $35. Good time, great meal. Girls night out. Christmas shopping got done too–later.

Let this be enough to whet your appetite for more show war stories. Now that I have a toe in the water (to mix metaphors), I shall be more likely to wade on in.

Places where you might catch a few of my paintings are:

NH Antiques Coop in Milford NH
Bartlett Inn in Bartlett NH
Red Jacket Resort in North Conway NH
Mesmer & Deleault Law Firm in Manchester NH
McGowan Gallery in Concord NH
Armory Cafe Gallery in Somerville, MA
Great Bay Community College in Portsmouth NH
Currier Art Museum in Manchester NH
Ellis River Art Gallery in Jackson NH

As usual, you may view paintings with prices and order prints, phone cases, pillows and the like at my Fine Art America page. If the painting you are interested in is not there, or if you prefer to bypass that experience, you may contact me by email to alotter@mac.com.

If you want to add a public comment to this blog, go to the bottom of this page where it says “Leave a Reply”, and enter your comment in that box. I love to get public comments, so don’t be shy!

Abstracting the landscape, Part 3

Posted by Aline on May 27, 2016

Faced with two conflicting imperative tasks this morning, I chose the more unpleasant one: unburden myself of excess items of apparel so as to unjam my closets and drawers and feel I could die without embarrassment. The accomplishment of such a task has such great rewards in terms of mood. I feel ever so virtuous, and lighter. More rewards in terms of delightful discoveries: By giving away half my wardrobe, I have unearthed a new wardrobe. With all that out of the way, perhaps I will be able to write a better blog, or at least a more cheerful one. (Finishing this blog post was the other imperative task.)

I have three new plein air paintings to discuss this week. Ummm, mostly plein air. I have made corrections in the studio to all of them. In cases 1 and 3 I had to eliminate exasperating details and in case 2 I actually added details that I could not see clearly on site.

Cases 1 and 2: Friday a small group of artists from the NH Plein Air group collected on the seacoast, morning in Hampton and afternoon in Rye. Our snowbird, Flo, joined us for the first time this season. Flo and I chose to paint the same scene, the rocky shoreline with a sliver of beach curving around to create a small cove. Instead of trying to describe it, here is a photo of it.

Hampton Beach NH

I reverted to my usual style, not trying to do anything but translate the scene to paint:

work in progress

After a day of contemplating the above painting, I came to the conclusion that the houses ought to get smaller in the distance, and fuzzier. Godlike, I brought the sky down over the more distant buildings. Then, and only then, did I refer to the photograph above. Ouch. The painting was accurate before I tinkered with it. I got out the OMS and wiped out what I had just done.

Hampton Beach painting, final

The layer underneath was partially dried, so it stayed put. The buildings got fuzzier. Fuzzier was good. However, my current struggles to steer my subconscious artistic leanings in the direction of abstraction can claim only the smallest victory in the case of this painting.

Having got that impulse toward reality out of the way, I was ready to abstract when we set up at the Odiorne Park boat launching area. A thin strip of bright green caught my eye across the marsh–the golf course on New Castle island. The sky was intensely blue, which blue was reflected in a few pools of water in the marsh. The trees in the distance made dark bars against the green of the golf course. The pattern was pleasingly haphazard. Using a palette knife, I quickly moved paint onto my canvas to compose these abstract elements. But something else made a play for attention: a herring gull posed on a large isolated boulder in the middle of the marsh. He stayed there pretty much all afternoon, making short trips off to do whatever, once calling on his mate to join him for a few minutes, always facing in the generally westerly direction. We speculated that he was watching over a nest so carefully hidding in the marsh that we could not see it. For a member of the animal kingdom, he was a very good model. However, he was too far from me for me to capture more than his shape and shadows.

the herring gull at Odiorne park

When I got back into the studio with my gull, I worried about some of the finer points, like, where should the eye be, how long is the beak really. Enlarging the photos I took weren’t helpful, so I studied all the images I could find online. Wouldn’t you know, none of them matched the position of my gull, but I was able to refine his eye.

On Guard

I think it’s OK to abstract the background and refine the focal point in the foreground. I’m the artist and I can do what I want, even if rules get broken in the process.

Case 3 comes from a farm. Sharon and I drove (well, she drove) all the way out to Keene, west of Keene actually, to Stonewall Farm. We had been invited to paint there Sunday. Rain was in the forecast but we took a chance, and lucked out. Although we went hoping to improve on our cow-skills, we both ended up painting the horse yard and the Belgian horses–two brown and one light tan– in the yard. Here is what the horses and the yard looked like.

Belgian horses at Stonewall Farm

Horse yard at Stonewall Farm

The tan (palomino?) horse was the one posing for me. One of the problems I had was the background–a large tan (straw-covered) surface upon which to paint tan-covered horse. I knew that wouldn’t work. I could have made the ground more of a dark brown, as if muddy, and kept my horse a light tan. Or the opposite, which is what I chose. Of course, the difficulty of getting the horse’s anatomy correct when his position would change every few minutes is painfully obvious. Plein air painters are taught not to chase the light, i.e., we don’t adjust the light and shadows just because the sun has moved. I tried not to change my horse’s leg positions just because he moved them. Then there was the bloody fence. At first, I welcomed the fence, thinking it would provide some interesting patterns. But getting it to cross my horse’s body where I wanted it to was proving impossible.

I was so unhappy with my painting that I couldn’t wait to tackle it at home. Unfortunately, in my zeal to get started deconstructing the painting I forgot to photograph it. Take my word for it, every element in the painting got sacrificed to abstraction and simplification.

Horse Yard, Stonewall Farm

My proudest moment was when I painted out the bloody fence. Now you have to imagine where it might have been. Now nothing comes between the viewer and the horse. Also, by blurring the edges of the horse, I imparted, I hope, a feeling of movement. More movement than in fact there was, but don’t tell anyone that!

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

At the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the New Hampshire Antique Co-op in Milford; at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center in Manchester, part of the Healing with Art program; and at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester.

Please save the date of Wednesday, June 22 for a reception at Labelle Winery in Bedford of the Petals 2 Paint show whereat floral designers create live flower arrangements inspired by a painting by participating East Colony artists. This has been an annual event of the East Colony Fine Art artists for many years, but this 2016 show seems likely to be our last as a group. Since the flowers don’t last more than a couple of days, you might as well plan to come for the reception.

Abstracting the Landscape, Part 2

Posted by Aline on May 18, 2016

Having recently come off a weekend devoted to abstracting the landscape (see previous post), during which we painted from photograph, imagination, memory, music and purely abstract concepts, I resolved to apply my newly acquired abstracting skills to actual landscapes. No, more correctly expressed: I resolved to TRY to apply those abstracting skills to actual landscapes. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. The spread of nature’s delights is so seductive that it is almost impossible to reduce a painting to a few good non abstract ideas.

Upper Ammonoosuk Falls, wip

Upper Ammonoosuk Falls, final

The photo on the left is the result of my painting for two hours at Upper Ammonoosuk Falls, getting sucked into the whole nature thing, trying to capture all the rocks and water rivulets. Fighting with myself. Until finally I heard myself remarking to another artist, by the way of encouragement, that depicting falls, boulders, etc. was hard because of the clutter. Clutter. Such an important non abstract concept. I went back to my painting and swept the water down over all my clutter. And it worked. So what if the scene never looked quite like that!

This morning I went over all four of my weekend paintings to see if any adjustments were needed. In the photo on the right you can maybe detect minor but important touches: the large rock slab in the virtual center was grayed back so as not to compete with the white of the falling water; the indeterminate brown area in bottom right was darkened and sharpened so as to clarify that it sits higher and in front of the falling water. I also added a few strokes of white water to the cascade, just to gild the lily. (By the way, while spell-checking Ammonoosuk I discovered YouTube videos of this spot, featuring reckless youths diving into the pools. Here is one of them.)

But did I really abstract my landscape? I did a better job than usual in reducing details. It’s a start. Maybe I’ll do better on the next one?

The next one turned out to be a panorama of intensely green fields dotted with intensely yellow dandelions, backed by periwinkle mountains, covered by gray clouds threatening rain. Because of the high chance of rain, we had driven south to Conway, where there is a bridge overpass that could provide us shelter from the rain while giving us a river’s edge view of an old-fashioned covered bridge. But we each of us got sucked in by the dandelions, and set about creating rain shelters within which to paint. I was riding with Sharon, so we had to find two ways to create painting studios out of one SUV. She had the tailgate. She also had the bright idea of creating a shelter for me out of my big yellow poncho and the two doors of her vehicle. Here’s a photo of me getting set up under my yellow tent. 20160513_152644

The tent cast such a strong yellow light over my painting (but not my palette), that I thought I was losing my mind when every time I scooped up a big blob of white paint to use in the sky, it turned yellow as soon as it hit the sky. The yellow tent had to have affected the rest of my painting as well, but it was only obvious in the sky. As a result, I had not much of a good idea of how my painting was coming along. This is not a good situation to be in, for a painter. However, I was trying to be abstract, so maybe, I thought, hue doesn’t matter. I blocked in the elements I wanted: the intense green pasture, the intense yellow dandelions, the intense blue mountains. Added a few tree and shrub features. Still a result not so abstract, but the important thing was, I was thinking abstractly.

Dandelion Field, wip

Dandelion Field, final

The one on the left is the painting as it was on Friday afternoon; the one on the right received some help today. It needed more yellow in the dandelions since it no longer had the benefit of a yellow poncho glowing all over it. I cleaned up the sky a bit. The photos do not do justice to the yellows and greens. Oh, well. Just keep in mind ALWAYS–the original looks so much better than the photo.

For my third painting, I was fortunate to be able to pick the group’s subject of the morning, and paintings always go better when one is inspired by the subject. There is a railroad that goes from North Conway north through Crawford Notch to a station near the base of the Cog Railway that climbs Mt. Washington. To get through the Notch, the train must travel on rails cut into the granite sides of the pass, and in this particular place, also bridge a gap in the rock face. Especially with the morning light casting a shadow of the rails onto the granite, the tracks create a pattern both arresting and intriguing.

No. Conway RR trestle, wip

RR Trestle in Crawford Notch

On the left side is what I got done on site. We were painting from a parking lot surrounded by growing things in various stages of greening (the trees budded out almost before our eyes–not just overnight but over lunch), so my view of the area below the trestle was obscured. I had installed rough representations of that obscuring growth, but I was bothered by the fact that you could not tell how far away the trestle was, nor how high it sat on the side of the granite face. So I scrubbed the growing things and tried to transform them into rock face. At home, today, I tried to improve on that aspect, as well as the rock formations above the trestle. I’m not convinced that my changes improved the perspective.

For our last outing, we chose a spot not far from our home base (the Bartlett Inn). As before, I resolved to think abstractly, just capture the shapes and colors that represented the site. The color for this one was blue. Intensely blue sky, intensely blue water reflecting the sky. A nice snaky curve in the waterway, good aerial effects for the more distant mountains. Simple elements that I should be able to use for an abstract landscape. Alas, the landscape had other ideas.

Saco River, wipe

Saco River, Bartlett, final

As an abstracted landscape, a pretty miserable failure. But more than passable as a normal plein air landscape, so I forgive myself. The changes I made this morning to the earlier version on the left were mostly in the light greens and the sandy shores. I don’t understand why the blue of the water looks so different now. I think there might have been too much contrast in the first photo. You can tell I have played around with the photo’s color cast, trying to match up with the original painting. The truth of the water lies somewhere between the two versions.

My companions for the weekend were my roommate, Betty Brown; chauffeur, Sharon Allen; colleague from Snow Camp, Suzanne Lewis of Rhode Island; young artist Stephen S from Hooksett; new members Leslie and Paul, from Massachusetts, and of course, the esteemed organizer of this semi-annual Getaway Weekend, Byron Carr of Contoocook. Some if not all of these people have websites where their paintings of the same scenes may or may not be posted.

If you are a regular reader, you have noticed I am employing a different format for the paired photos. WordPress has added new options, and I am learning how to use them. You can click on the above photos to enlarge them and to read their captions. Do you like this format?

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Kickstart

Posted by Aline on May 9, 2016

I have continued to be Very Bad and Unrepentant. Finding oneself takes time. I had to write an artist’s bio last week, and instead of reciting biographical facts about myselves, I skipped merrily over past incarnations to state affirmatively–I’m all mixed up but happily so. Here is how I put it:

Pursuing a profession in the arts is inevitably a struggle because excellence is never actually attained. One is always reaching. Aline has found herself reaching in more than one direction at a time, which for a long time has confused her and perhaps worried her followers. But she now has decided to embrace the diversity of her subject matter and styles and celebrate each on its own terms. Her style ranges from loose and impressionistic to refined and deliberate. Meanwhile, she has served notice that she will be experimenting with abstracted landscapes as well.

And indeed I do today have something to show for that last bold statement. I attended a three-day workshop on Abstracting the Landscape with Barbara Danser, who teaches at the NH Institute of Art but last weekend (yes, including Mother’s Day) was teaching for the Currier Art School (an offshoot of the Currier Museum of Art, which I serve as a docent). Barbara started us off slow, with a photograph that we chose from many that she had ready. Then she had us paint the same scene without referring to the photo. I believe the purpose might have been to divorce us from the details and focus us on the big picture (so to speak). Also to this end, I believe, she imposed time limits as a way of weaning us away from detail in our paintings. In the beginning, the limit was fifteen minutes for each effort. Later on, she allowed us 30 minutes, perhaps even more when she saw us close to accomplishing something.

From Photo

From memory of photo

After that one use of a photo for inspiration, Barbara gave us “Prompts” as inspiration. The first one involved a female walking on a beach in the mist.

Beachwalker in the mist (6×6)

For the next one, she played some music. I wish I could remember what it was–classical for sure. Debussy?

From a musical prompt

I deployed my palette knife more than usual because that is a faster way to lay down lots of paint. Once I had the paint on the panel, I could move it around. I had been using paper to paint on, but with the one above, I used a panel that I had previously painted on. There is no trace of the original painting showing through.

After lunch on the first day (Friday), Barbara gave us another photo to work from: that of a wave. We had a choice of waves. I chose the more dramatic of the two:

Wave from photo

Naturally, we then had to paint the same wave from memory:

Wave from memory

After the wave, we got no more photos to use as references, but we examined the works of other abstract landscapists to get us in the mood. I also found myself mentally referring back to paintings I had painted years ago, which was a little spooky.

The sequence of the next seven paintings, and the specific prompts for each one, has gotten a little muddled in my mind. What I can remember about each one I have put in the caption, which I believe you will be able to read if you click on the image. All of them were either 8×10 or 9×12, but I have accepted WordPress’s suggestion for varying the apparent sizes.

Light drenching land and sky alike

another music prompt

Trees, spring green

no idea where this came from

New Mexican artist, minimalist

Trees, avoiding green.

Rain drops, musical notes. The Last One.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

And save the date of Wednesday, June 22 for a reception at Labelle Winery in Bedford of the Petals 2 Paint event whereat floral designers create live flower arrangements inspired by a painting. This is an annual event of the East Colony Fine Art artists and seems likely to be their last show as a group. The flowers don’t last more than a couple of days, so you might as well plan to come for the reception.

Sabbatical?

Posted by Aline on March 2, 2016

Bless me Father, it has been three months since my last confession. Forgive me please? (My Catholic upbringing surfaces at the weirdest times!) Or maybe we can just say I was on Sabbatical. Artists are notoriously moody, say some people. I’m not sure that’s true–or appropriate under the circumstances. After all, this was my first Sabbatical in ten years. Heck, I’m not even sure I can call myself an artist at this point.

However, I am sure of one thing: when people create something they like to call “art”, they desperately want to share it, unless they fall into a very small category of Hermit Artists (I’ve only known one in person). Trouble is, in sharing their creations with others, artists become vulnerable to failure of reception, even rejection. Take me, for instance. Ten years working hard toward greatness, not there yet, not even close– must be due to a lack of talent. That no-talent suspicion caught up with me last December. I didn’t stop all creating. I slowed down, and I didn’t feel much like sharing any of it online. It didn’t seem important anymore. I considered becoming a Hermit Artist. That is still an option.

Two other changes have impacted my ability to blog: First, I’m working the tax season at H&R Block, preparing tax returns. When I was still practicing law, preparing tax returns was what I did to relax–it was nice to have a moderately challenging puzzle to put together and call it complete. But the hours working are hours I can’t create either art or blog entries.

Second, I’m obsessed with solving a problem faced by all artists–display opportunities. East Colony Fine Art is virtually kaput, although we will go out with gusto, putting on a final Petals to Paint at LaBelle Winery in Bedford, sometime in April. We (East Colony) couldn’t keep our gallery open because the artists had to cover expenses such as rent and utilities, but, after nine years of experience, it became clear that the sales were not sufficient to justify the expense for artists, not all of whom had trust funds to support them. Something was fundamentally wrong with that whole model. Artists should not have to pay to display their works, however much they crave to do so. The display of artworks–not only those by famous artists in museums but also those by the local artists–benefits the community. Such public benefits should be supported by public means. I am working on a model (working on it only in my head so far), and am investigating grant possibilities. Just don’t have enough time right now to formulate a concrete proposal.

Meanwhile, to pick up where we left off in December, perhaps you would like to see what became of the Work in Progress I was calling “After the Wedding”. It is currently to be known as “Two Takes.”

Two Takes

Weeks had gone by without an opportunity to complete “After the Wedding”, so when we went to paint Natalie in a new pose in the same chair, I decided to place her in the foreground of “After the Wedding”. I kept my strokes quick and intuitive so as not spoil the spontaneity that I had enjoyed in “After the Wedding.” I now have an unusual product for me, one trending toward the loose, barely suggested, portraits of Caroline Anderson, which I admire so much. (Mine leaves a lot less to the imagination than hers does.) It has been suggested that I darken the hand and chair on the right side of the picture, to keep eyes focussed on the actions in the center. What do you think?

Here’s a charcoal drawing I did last night in Deidre Rilely’s class at the Institute (NH Institute of Art), Advanced Figure Drawing:

New model (Jon), new paper (Niddegen), and dramatic lighting combined to inspire a pretty good job of it. So that kind of brings you up to date.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

At the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the Audubon Massabesic Center in Auburn, as part of an exhibit of Manchester Artists Association paintings and photographs; at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center in Manchester, part of the Healing with Art program; and at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester.

Practice, Practice, Practice!

Posted by Aline on August 28, 2015

This week I have hardly painted at all. I’ve had three doctor appointments, several projects left over from when I was a tax lawyer (translation: I’m still preparing tax returns for old clients), and various minor household emergencies to deal with. Nevertheless, I do have something to put out there for your consideration.

I have been messing around with older paintings that never made the grade. On two of them, I painted an abstract landscape over, and inspired by, the painting underneath.

Red Leaves against Early Snow

Purple Mountain Majesty

On yet another, which had failed to excite because it was a party scene with no people in it, I set about inventing people. Seems to me that I should be able to come up with a method for faking believable people in a loosely painted scene. I have looked at some of Sargent’s paintings of his friends logging about on picnics and such, and I observe that there are many spots in his paintings that are totally undefined. Sargent could paint loosely with confidence. I am thinking that if I start by just getting figures in the frame, I can worry about developing a confident style later, after I have the general technique down. This attempt is actually my third; several years ago when I was on my-bike-race-up-Mt-Washington kick, I included crowds of people in the backgrounds of two paintings. Both attempts were highly successful. Both were largely abstract. It should also be noted that I had photographic references for both. I am pleased to show you:

My son, the biker.

Fans

This, my third attempt, could not be abstract because the people are the foreground and the building in the background is pretty sharply delineated. The buildings started out as the focal point, and now I’m trying to plop these figures in front of it and have it come out looking kind of reasonable. I made up my mind that this exercise did not have to result in a successful painting.

I started with an ocherish color on my brush, and painted in silhouettes of plausible figures. I found it hard to invent animated gestures. Maybe that will get easier with practice. Then I painted other colors, representing clothes and hair, on the silhouettes. I threw in a few floppy hats and one striped striped. Here is the result:

Lawn Party at Exeter Inn

I hate to admit this, but I also tinkered with a couple of paintings that I had deemed presentable enough to post on this blog as decent achievements. With the tinkering I have spoiled them. I would go back and restore what was obliterated, but I am afraid the paintings will never get back the freshness that made them so pleasing to begin with. What can I say? Lesson learned. Oh, you want to see? Here is the saddest one–I did have to fill in the background, which is what got me started with the tinkering. First the original posted version, then today’s:

Natalie 2

Natalie after Retouches

All I can say is, thank God I didn’t touch the hair. But isn’t it curious that by toning down the natural redness of her cheek, chest and arms, I drained the life from her. Surely that is another important lesson: let the color chips fall where they will.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

At the Library Arts Center in Newport, NH; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the Firefly American Bistro on 22 Concord Street, Manchester; and at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester.

As usual, you may view paintings with prices and order prints, iPhone cases and the like at my Fine Art America page. If the painting you are interested in is not there, or if you prefer to bypass that experience, you may contact me by email to alotter@mac.com.

Seeing Red

Posted by Aline on April 21, 2014

The cover story this week is my Friday painting of Becky, wherein I decided to create a bright red background to set off her figure. Backgrounds are so often a pain in the neck. Are there rules? I don’t know, but I suspect there are some, and I’m pretty sure one of them is, no bright red backgrounds. I always think of Rembrandt, who knew a thing or two about painting portraits. All his backgrounds are dark and subdued. You don’t notice them because you aren’t supposed to notice them. Sargent, too. But what about Cezanne? He did at least one self-portrait in which the background was a quirky yellow and orange pattern of expressive shapes.

Cezanne, Self-Portrait

I decided to go with Cezanne on Friday, and express myself in red.

I started this painting still puzzling over the “practice or paint?” conundrum, so I gave myself permission to play around. But this is what happens:– pretty accurate portrait, rendered about as tightly as I ever get in a three-hour session. Perhaps the red background is my inner abstract artist expressing frustration!

Saturday we had our last Saturday Life Group meeting until next Fall. Becky was again the model. After the quick one-minute poses, the five-minute pose and the ten-minute pose, I got a back view for the 20-minute pose. That was OK, because it meant my side of the room would get a frontal view for the next, longer pose.

However, we paid dearly for that privilege with the last long pose (“long” in this group means between 40-60 minutes). I could have moved to a different part of the room in order to get more of her body in view, but all of us in my corner went with what we got: Half a back, a head of hair, and a draped cube. All three of us deployed color to add interest. I brought out the compressed charcoal to better make an impression of expression. Compress expressive impression? Whatever. It’s the liveliest of the three:

Stripes with Hair

Change of Subject: What is majorly on my mind these days is my upcoming stint as the Featured Artist at the East Colony Fine Art Gallery. Larry Donovan and I are sharing the spotlight for the month of June. We have talked a little about serving up a coordinated theme, and we have picked a title that will permit just about anything from either of us: Through the Artist’s. . . [Window/Eyes/Viewpoint]–one of those words. My dilemma is what to showcase: portraits, nudes, landscapes, or those few abstract-y paintings I have produced. I am so conflicted that I am ready to trash all the good advice about picking one style or facet and just put up my favorite works whether they look like they came from a single artist or not. For example, I’d like to show this little half-hour plein-air sketch as well as the six-hour “Margaret and Her Nook“:

Water’s Edge

Sometimes I discover value in a pile of forgotten panels. I never photographed Water’s Edge before, but I did frame it and hang it on my wall, where I grew ever fonder of it. Such a slow-growing affection is a stark contrast to Margaret and Her Nook, which I knew was going to be a successful painting before I had even finished it.

I am planning to construct a floating type frame for “Darkly” as advised by my mentors [see wailing a week ago here, and the painting here], and I am wondering–if I made similar frames for all the paintings I want to feature in June, would that unify them sufficiently to allow my public to appreciate the disparate styles? Each painting would be mounted on a larger backboard painted black, which backboard will be framed in a simple box, also painted black. Water’s Edge might call for a narrow gold fillet around the painting itself. I’m thinking that is the only way I could get away with showing my crazy quilt of art. But will Margaret shine from such a frame?

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery and the East Colony Fine Art Gallery in Manchester (both are in Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn and Bernerhof Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester; at the Manchester office of Congresswoman Carol Shea Porter; in French Hall (the main building) of the New Hampshire Institute of Art in Manchester, NH; and at her studio by appointment (email: alotter@mac.com).

You may also view paintings with prices and order prints at my Fine Art America page. If the painting you are interested in is not there, or if you prefer to bypass that experience, you may contact me using this feedback form.

Just Practicing

Posted by Aline on April 15, 2014

I got my head spun around this week by a glimpse into the perspective of another kind of artist, the kind that has found a home in the world of “contemporary” art. I am using the word “contemporary” here in the sense that has come to be associated with it in the art world, namely, nonrepresentional art. Plenty of contemporary (in the original meaning of the word) are painting representational pictures, elegantly and successfully, but it seems like few of them are represented by tony NYC galleries or being acquired by museums. There’s a bias in favor of abstract. All the buzz goes to the unconventional. Something called a “concept” has become more important (perhaps) than the skillful execution. What I have been working on these past nine years is skillful execution, and I’m not even there yet. But if only I could reorient my brain in the direction of coming up with concepts, I might not need to get any better with the representational skills.

This particular angst is nothing new for me. What is new is the spin, the perspective, the insight. I was at a gathering of students celebrating the last class with a party. At Bea’s, of course. I had taken the same class last semester. It was the Explore, Express, Exploit class, triple E we call it–the class in which I tried very hard to do something different. See, e.g., prior blogs here and here. The party included a critique, not just by the class instructor (Patrick McCay), but by all present, students and professors. Tongues had been loosened by copious supply of wine, and the critiques soon dissolved into many conversations occurring simultaneously and uproariously. Being on a diet, my wine intake was limited to one glass, so I was able to observe and be entertained by the chaos. It was such good sport that, when they ran out of paintings to critique, demand was made for me to submit two of my paintings from last semester to the withering analyses. (I had the two outside in my car because they were on their way in the a.m. to the Institute for hanging in an exhibit.) So, yes, they were framed, and clearly “finished”. Nevertheless, many potential improvements were found by half the crowd and denigrated by the other half, all good fun and maybe a little educational, and the party was about to come to an end, its ostensible purpose having been fulfilled, when a visiting dignitary, the dean of something and second in command at the Institute, demanded to know what direction I was going, given that one of my paintings had ended up representational and the other did not. (That may be the longest sentence I have ever written!) I tried to dodge the question, which was not difficult since everyone else in the room was still talking all at once, but he silenced the room and insisted that I provide an answer. Ahhhgh! I confessed that I had no idea where I might be headed, that in fact my usual MO was plein air painting and working from the live figure. Both, I didn’t have to say, being totally representation. So he said, and I quote, “That’s just practice.”

I don’t really disagree–what I have been doing is a lot of practicing, but toward what? For the first time, I wondered if there is a chance for me to see over the fence into that field of unconventionality, that field seeded with new concepts. One needs a goal, and I guess the one I had set for myself was to become a portraitist. But I haven’t been working very hard toward that goal lately, and maybe that is the fault of my goal, not of me. If portraiture is not the right goal for me, then I can’t stay excited about it. It may be time for me to Explore more deliberately an Expression that is beyond representational. Exploitation, what’s that?

Meanwhile, I am still practicing. Last Tuesday’s figure session produced this one:

Beard with Hands

His forehead is too high, but I can fix that.

Friday I had a simultaneous committee meeting and the need to drop off those two paintings competing for my attention, so I took in my charcoals. In the first 20 minutes I produced a drawing that I liked so much that I could not bring myself to touch it after the break.

Ghost Face

My start-over produced this drawing.

Becky, A Head Shot

Her nose is too long. Damn! Too-long nose cannot be fixed without resizing the whole bottom half of the face. [I fixed a problem with the shape of her left eye–on our right–that I only noticed after posting the image to my blog.]

Today, I decided at the outset not to obsess over any details, to try to be conceptual instead of representational–just as I have decided at many outsets before this. Today, however, I have the added consideration of last Thursday’s critique. Sure, I had that Friday as well, but it was too new then. Hadn’t sunk in.

Sweet Thinking

Is it, in terms of direction, an inch or two away from my usual? I kind of think so.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Duality Continues

Posted by Aline on December 16, 2013

Before I get into certain issues involving the EEE class, check out these pretty decent likenesses I achieved using charcoal on Mi-Tientes pastel paper. First, from the Friday life group, here is Rebecca.

Portrait, Rebecca December 2013 (12×9)

I truly cannot count the number of times I have tried to do a portrait of Rebecca, with varying degrees of success. I posted a bunch of them in this blog (“A Month of Beckys”) about 7 months ago; over a year ago I included the very first one here in a blog titled simply “Becky”. Despite the annoying texture of the pastel paper (I chose the more highly textured side by mistake), the one I just completed is the best. That’s encouraging since it means I am still improving and have not yet hit my limit, if there is one.

My other likeness attempt came as part of the Saturday Life Group’s meeting. A popular male model whom we have not seen for many months was back in NH, and one pose gave me the opportunity to try for a likeness of his face. Looks pretty accurate to me, but I may be biased. Here are both of the longer poses from Saturday–the first one, as you will see, did not afford any view of the face–and I remembered to use the smoother side of the paper:

Mike No. 1

Mike No. 2

Drawing a man who is “ripped”, as they say, is a lot of fun, and just what we needed after so many months of rounded flesh.

Putting all that likeness stuff aside, we can get to the bigger issue: can Aline come up with a paintable abstract concept, and go on to paint it appealingly? Jury is still out, but hope has not stopped springing. The two that I am going to show you are both from the EEE class, of course. Thursday was our last class. Many of my classmates intend to take it again in the Spring. I, however, am putting my money on the Master Portrait Workshop with Dan Thompson and don’t feel I can afford the luxury of taking two courses in a single semester. But I stray from the main story: the EEE class adjourned halfway through our allotted time at the Institute to regroup at Bea’s place, to eat, drink, be merry, and critique each other’s works. First up was my now-familiar abstracted landscape evoking stained-glass windows and Monet. Patrick stood by his initial eval, but my classmates objected strenuously to the light-colored wedge, which they felt was distracting. Peter Clive was present as well, so I asked for his opinion. He advised repeating the wedge shape in the lower right corner. Classmates seemed happy with that solution. Therefore, on Sunday, after having endured a few restless nights trying to make sense of that advice, I dutifully inserted Wedge Minor into the masterpiece (please hear that with ironic inflection). This smaller echo remains as unexplained as the original Wedge Major. Fortunately, it being abstract, I didn’t have to justify it in terms of a representing a recognizable object. Most important, the new element has to blend into the scene as if it had always been there.

This is your first view of this piece as translated through my Nikon SLR, so this version looks better simply because of that. I had the devil of a time getting an image without glare inasmuch as I had ladled on the paint and parts of the painting will reflect glare no matter where you set up the light sources. My solution was to go with less light and increase “exposure” in the editing room. Details got lost, however. There are more of the red dots in the middle background, for instance.

My last EEE project, started Thursday after a lot of planning, is complicated. Shiao-Ping Wang presented a program at the recent meeting of the Manchester Artists Association, a program that I had, as program director, requested of her. “How do you translate an abstract concept into a work of art?” She showed us how she did it, explaining how her love of water became represented by a specific shape that she repeated in many inventive ways. A few days after that, I saw a call for art for an exhibit on the theme “Love”, to be juried by Eric Aho, an abstract landscape artist whom I admire. Here is a short video with Eric, which gives you an idea of what he does as an abstract landscape painter. Because of the juror and because of Shaio Ping, I decided to make an abstract painting for the show, based on something I love, namely, cats. And fur is what I particularly love about cats. Patrick had shown me years ago his painting of white chickens using a brayer instead of a brush. The breasts of those chickens looked unbelievably soft and downy. So what I intend to make is a painting about cats, using furriness as the symbol and perhaps deploying a brayer in my quest for irresistible texture. But yet another influence out of the Contemporary Gallery of the Currier Museum led me to plan a hidden image of a larger-than-life cat face in the background of my abstract, furry foreground. So far, I have completed only that background. I have to let it dry now, before attempting the more difficult task of layering on the furriness without totally obliterating the face.

Love and Fur WIP (20×16)

(By the way, as the party was breaking up, Patrick told me that I had all of the other aspects of art making under control–I just needed more help with the conceptual aspects–advice that suggests I should reconsider my decision to take the portrait workshop instead of another dose of EEE. )

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery and the East Colony Fine Art Gallery in Manchester (both are in Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester; in the Community Gallery at the Currier Gallery in Manchester; at the Manchester office of Congresswoman Carol Shea Porter; at the Studio 550 Art Center in Manchester NH, as part of the annual 6×6 show of the Womens Caucus for Art; and at her studio by appointment (email: alotter@mac.com).

The Ghost of Steven Assael

Posted by Aline on November 26, 2013

Actually, Steven Assael still lives, but his spirit visited me this morning. You may remember how impressed I was by him in the course of a workshop that I took last summer. I was impressed and frustrated. Read all about it here. This morning, at our regular meeting of the Tuesday Life Group, I felt as if I had, for the very first time, successfully applied his method for painting a nude, and boy! did it feel good! Not all of the painting is a success . . . yet. Our model will be giving us another session next week in the same pose. But I am so thrilled with this start that I had to share it with you. While I was still in the act of painting, I wanted to shout out to the room for the other artists to gather around and see what I was accomplishing. Here is the image:

Margaret and her Nook WIP

The big deal here is the quality of the skin, especially on her back. The key technique: I feathered it with the fan brush that I acquired for the Assael workshop but never got around to using because I never got this close to finishing. My heretofore preferred way of painting nudes is more impressionistic. Perhaps the only significant difference is a simple one: Assael feathers his brushstrokes on the skin; my Impressionistic style favors obvious unmodulated brush strokes. I guess it has taken me several months to let go of my old conceit and actually try to create the kind of glow achieved by Assael. To see what he did as a demo for us, click here. This new painting method may not represent a permanent new me, but it is something that fascinates me, and offers new challenges for painting nudes. Keeps it interesting!

And on another track, way off to the side of the above:–my exploration of abstract landscapes. Here is a Work in Progress:

Imaginary Elements WIP

Here is the finished painting: (I need to know what you think–then next week I will report on the class’s reaction.)

Imaginary Elements

Here is another start on something, another abstracted landscape I guess. I’m thinking it would make interesting wallpaper at this point, so I have to dig down and find a more compelling reason for it to continue in existence.

The Start of Something

Remember how I bellyached about not have having any photographic record of all my Blackstone Valley paintings? One of my buyers came through with an image of the Castle Hill painting that they purchased.

Castle Hill

This is a fairly accurately rendered painting of funky farm buildings located in Whitinsville, Massachusetts. I think the stone wall stole the show. The wall was built by hand by men employed by the landowner to keep them busy (and earning money) during the Great Depression. The funky buildings resulted from the same impulse, I believe.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Two Projects Are Resolved, and a Theme Continues

Posted by Aline on November 11, 2013

Bear Notch sunset 24×36

Bear Notch Sunset (named for an overlook on Bear Notch Road in Bartlett, NH) is the piece that I started as an abstract painting inspired by Tom Thompson. Like all of my previous attempts to paint abstractly, it morphed into a recognizable landscape. But this time I collaborated–I gave in to my natural predilection in order to rescue the painting (after all, 24×36 canvases don’t grow on trees), but am still determined to keep working on the abstract angle. Proof: here is the one I started immediately after declaring Bear Notch Sunset finished:

Design Inspired by Nature 11×14

I had no photographic reference for Design Inspired. It grew from a mental image, which I tried to capture in paint, thinking if it’s successful as a design, I might do a larger version. However, I currently am not inclined to go big with it. Not that I didn’t enjoy the expressiveness of applying this thick, dark pigment. (I switched internally for inspiration from Tom Thompson to Vincent Van Gogh.) But I don’t feel like repeating that design; I’d rather come up with a new idea to use in the same manner. Maybe not a landscape.

Unfinished business: I promised images of my four paintings from the Blackstone Valley Plein Air Competition at the end of September, but I have only one to show you. Two of them were purchased, one to persons unknown, and the other to a nonresponsive purchaser for whom I have only an email address. A third I donated to the sponsoring organization (“Alternatives”). But the fourth has come home, and, alleluia! it was my personal favorite:

In the Shadow

The little community was aswarm with painters (25 but seemed like more), while I was tucked away in this secluded spot that the director had led me to. I felt very special. I was on the balcony of one of the red brick mill buildings that Alternatives inhabits. The roof over the balcony cast a huge shadow over the millstream below. It may help your orientation if I tell you that the waterway disappears over the edge of a dam on the right. The play of shadow and light on the water and on the aquatic plants intrigued me, but I worried that you couldn’t tell what was happening. Others have assured me that they easily “read” it as what it was. Was the subject matter too abstract for the customers? Or just not evocative of a landmark? Doesn’t matter, I’m happy to have it still in my possession.

The Alternatives event was outstanding, as good as Castine except with respect to the number of avid collectors at the finish of Castine. Both were first-time events, which makes the undertakings even more admirable and their success amazing. Alternatives treated the artists like kings. We got box lunches delivered to us in the field on the first day, and a buffet luncheon back at headquarters on the second day, and more food at the auction that night. High class all the way. I wish I had made a point of meeting the juror, Charles Movalli, but at that point I was on the edge of wipeout and still had the drive home ahead of me (2 hours at least).

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery and the East Colony Fine Art Gallery in Manchester (both are in Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester; at the Epsom Library in Epsom, NH; at the Manchester office of Congresswoman Carol Shea Porter; at the Studio 550 Art Center in Manchester NH, as part of the annual 6×6 show of the Womens Caucus for Art; and at her studio by appointment (email: alotter@mac.com).

Paintings by Aline

A Painter's Progress

Category Archives: Abstract

The Duke of Manchester

Exhibiting

Abstracting the landscape, Part 3

Abstracting the Landscape, Part 2

Kickstart

Sabbatical?

Practice, Practice, Practice!

Seeing Red

Just Practicing

Duality Continues

The Ghost of Steven Assael

Two Projects Are Resolved, and a Theme Continues

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: