I just finished another iceberg painting! I’m quite excited. Today is my last studio painting day for a while and I completed this piece in time for the Confluence GalleryWeathering Change show I’ll be participating in at the end of month. Tomorrow I head to Seattle for a week to have a bit of fun, pick up some framing supplies, and to attend the opening gala for the Kent Summer Art exhibit at the Centennial Gallery. It’s July 7th, 5pm—8pm and I’d love to see you there! When I return next week I’ll be framing paintings and packing up for Greenland. A little tight schedule-wise, but everything should come together. Wish me luck!
My new Olympus LS-10 sound recorder recently arrived in the mail and I’m having great fun experimenting with it. I’m excited to take the recorder to Greenland for my High Latitudes Expedition where I plan to make field recordings of wild life and the environment, as well as interview the researchers I work with. To filter wind noise, I have a Windjammer (it looks like a tiny Russian hat) which fits over the microphones. Here’s a brief clip from some chatting with my dad, Seelye Martin. He’s an oceanographer with the University of Washington who specializes in studying sea ice and remote sensing. I hold him partly responsible for my fixation with ice- something about growing up with polar parkas in the hall closet and stories of remote regions…
I’ve been enjoying watching and listening for new birds in the neighborhood. I learned about the Grey Catbird while walking down our driveway by a little Aspen grove. I noticed “jungle noises” and then heard a catlike “mew.” Using the BirdsEye app on my iPod (which my brother helped create!), I found that Catbirds had been observed in our region and then spotted it in a tangle of brush. It was fun to identify, especially after learning that it is in the Mimidae family of mimics and that some of the jungle sounds I’d heard may have been learned from the Catbird’s winter in Central America.
The little Western Wood-Pewee is a new favorite of mine, mostly because a juvenile likes to perch on the water spigot outside our dining window to forage for bugs. I love watching it cock its head left and right searching for insects before swooping out and returning to its perch, sometimes with a fly between its beak. Finally, the American Goldfinch caught my attention with its brilliant colors and swooping flight. More birds on my “bird card” list including Grosbeaks and Ruddy Ducks! Any requests?
During the past few weeks, the landscape around my house has just exploded with green. It’s been cultivated by warm weather and days of rain, which are productive for studio work. I recently finished the painting above and thought I’d share a bit of my process. It’s by far the greenest and most detailed painting I’ve ever completed! First, my inspiration was a large field sketch I completed a couple weeks ago using my new tripod. I liked the general composition, and sketched out ideas for painting the Apsen trees more densely, exploring the patterns of trunks. Once I finalized my drawing (done lightly with a 2H pencil), I used brown packing tape and a razor blade to mask out the tree trunks.
Next I wet the paper and began to wash in colors, using Daniel Smith’s hansa yellow medium, pthalo blue (red shade), pthalo green, quincridone rose, and quinacridone burnt orange. (My color inspiration came from Molly Hashimoto’s lovely Alder Demonstration). As some areas dried, I began to add more detail.
Working my way from the background to the foreground, I defined foliage and painted the trunks. I used a limited palette, working only with the five colors listed above.
I continued adding patterns of light and dark to the foliage and trunks.
Finally I added the shadows in the road and defined the grasses.
To complete the painting, I punched up my shadows to emphasize value changes. I keep in mind the advice a professor of mine in college once gave me, “make your darks dark!” Once the marks I was making were no longer making an appreciable difference to the painting, I declared it complete! (Please note, the colors between these photos shifted as the light changed in my studio.)
Last weekend after my High Latitudes Benefit in Seattle (which was great fun- thank you everyone who came!), Darin and I headed over the South Cascades mountains to the small town of Tieton which is close to Yakima. We were there to visit the Mighty Tieton, an entrepreneurial arts endeavor founded in 2005 by Ed Marquand, the owner of Marquand Books in Seattle. I’m exploring possibilities for working with the Mighty Tieton as artist-in-residence next year and it was exciting to learn more about their projects and see their creative spaces.
Ed and his associates invested in several empty fruit warehouses and buildings that have since been converted into amazing art, work, live, and meeting spaces. One warehouse is now 14 condos and another 40,000 square foot warehouse is now home to the Goathead Press printmaking workshop, a full woodshop, kite workshop, the studio of sound-artist Trimpin, and a massive event space. Another building down the street is home to Marquand Editions studio and bindery. The creative energy of so many art and production spaces is inspiring. It’s well worth a visit and while there, be sure to stop by the brand new Tieton Creamery with fresh goat cheese and eggs. I look forward to my artist-in-residency and contributing to Mighty Tieton’s endeavors!
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Donations are tax-deductible, made possible through fiscal sponsorship from the Allied Arts Foundation.
sound recorder recently arrived in the mail and I’m having great fun experimenting with it. I’m excited to take the recorder to Greenland for my High Latitudes Expedition where I plan to make field recordings of wild life and the environment, as well as interview the researchers I work with. To filter wind noise, I have a 
(it looks like a tiny Russian hat) which fits over the microphones. Here’s a brief clip from some chatting with my dad, Seelye Martin. He’s an oceanographer with the University of Washington who specializes in studying sea ice and remote sensing. I hold him partly responsible for my fixation with ice- something about growing up with polar parkas in the hall closet and stories of remote regions…
