farm to canvas

This weekend I'll be exhibiting in the 16th Annual Telephone Factory Art Show. This will be my fourth time participating in this event, and once again I'll be in our friend Sunny's loft 102. Joining me will be artist Amy Prasad and potter Lori Buff, and Kate will once again provide the snacks.

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What are the three best things you want to have on the first Spring weekend of the year? Well, you won't believe this, but I had all of them this past weekend. No kidding. I had perfect camping weather, a gathering of over one hundred banjo players and a perigee-syzygy. Yes, you read that right. I can't believe it either.

So stay tuned as I'll be going into those things everyone dreams about over this and the next two posts, and how I was lucky enough to have them all in the same weekend.

Friday I headed down to High Springs, Florida for the 2011 Suwannee Banjo Camp. It is held every year at O'Leno State Park in the north central part of the state. The camp was amazing, but more about that in my next entry.

When warmer days first begin and the leaves start to sprout on the trees, I get a big time urge to go camping and sleep outside in my little ultralight tent. As it turns out, Kate was in Houston helping her mother and sister throw a bridal and a baby shower (for two different people), so I got to have a very Don-activity indulgent trip while she was gone. I had been reading about the camp for months and the location made it a perfect choice for my bachelor weekend.

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 Friday night's art walk was a lot of fun. Many thanks to George, Jason, Terry, Sean, Olivia, John, Jared and the rest of the group at Farm Burger and Fowler Farms for their support.

A big thank you to everyone that came by the show. It is always such a great feeling to share my work and see everyone's response. One unique thing about this display was the fact that very possibly, people were viewing a painting that depicted their dinner that night. And yes, I did use that joke a lot Friday night.

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As I was preparing for Friday's show tonight, I realized that I hadn't posted one of my Farm to Canvas paintings. And luckily, my camera is back from the repair shop and I have a great new lens. I got a Nikon 35mm/f1.8 fixed lens and it is much easier to photograph my artwork with it. 

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Farm Burger is featured on CNN

. Check it out!

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If you want to do some hard work, there is no better place to do so than on a farm. 

So it was fitting that when Jie agreed to spend some time with me landscape painting, he chose Fowler Farms from the list of places I suggested we paint.

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 Yesterday I went back to the farm that supports Farm Burger and Farm 255. I got to meet John and Holly Ivy, who own and live on the farm. They were super hospitable and I got to learn a lot about the place I've been painting lately.

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Back in 2008, my friend Marc Taro took a speed plein air painting workshop from Xiangyuan Jie. I really like what Marc did that week, but unfortunately, Jie hasn't done another workshop of the sort. I also haven't set aside time to practice in that manner, as I usually set out to get in more finished work when I'm in the field. 

However, I've had a few outings lately where speed painting was the only way I could get any painting in. Still not quite as limited a timeframe as Jie's workshop (I think they worked on 5

 minute paintings), but quick nonetheless. In fact, I seemed to have just enough time to mix different colors and get them on the canvas. I did spent about half the time on the cows, as I wanted to practice cow painting for my Farm to Canvas series.

Why did I have a limited window? Well, this painting was done in Gerton, NC during a weekend getaway June 20th with Kate to celebrate our one year anniversary.  Gerton is just outside Asheville, in th

e heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. We had a great time. Asheville is a fantastic place, and we hiked at Chimney Rock State Park, dined at great restaurants, and visited some very excellent art galleries.

I found time to sneak away while Kate napped to do this sketch. It was at a farm just down the road from our cabin. I'm not sure if this farm is organic or if these cows are exclusively grass-fed. However, Asheville is very much into local produce and meats, and is an excellent place for Farm to Table lovers.

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 I spent another day at the animal farm owned by Farm 255 and Farm Burger. Kate joined me and we spent several hours in a cow pasture in the hot Georgia sun. It was a breezy day, so it was nice most of the time. We both worked on some good farmer tans, too.

We started the day by driving to Athens and eating brunch at Farm 255. It was our first time there and we loved it. Kate had the rustic eggs with grits, and sausage. I had a braised beef, egg and cheese biscuit. The biscuit was one of the best I've ever had. It was served with pork braised greens. I'm not the biggest greens fan, but those were really good. Not sure if it was the pork flavoring or the fresh, local greens... 

So this scene is from the middle of the cow pasture. The cows did a very nice job moving around so I could choose from a lot of poses. The barns are the two main barns on this property, and the yellow emblem on the barn on the left is of the sun. I painted this on a 9x12 canvas panel so I could suggest a panorama.

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As I've written many times before, I find it awesome when I am outside painting. Even when it is hot, flies buzzing around and smelling like manure, I easily get 'into the zone'. The zone where time has no meaning, and I get lost in my work. Even if you aren't a painter, I'm sure you can imagine the process I went through today. You focus on the task at hand - the task of handling the paint, light and shade, color and value.  You evaluate the spaces and decide on the composition. You weigh out the main subjects, and gain an appreciation for the energy and life around you. Dark violets over there. Sunny yellow greens here. Repeat that nice pink and umber hue. Capture how the sunlight falls and the the trees make those nice transparent shadows. Make your best effort to translate what it is that you feel at this moment, in this place. Step back and realize that your painting features a hog's ass.

The fine folks at Full Moon Farms sent me an email after my last post! To help me with my "Farm to Canvas" series, they graciously gave me access to their farms. Today I went to the animal farm. I can easily find hundreds of scenes to paint there. They have several acres where they raise pigs, cows and chickens. The place has several nice old barns, big trees and wide fields. So expect to see a lot of pieces from this place, and I expect I'll tackle a few of the subjects more than once. In fact, I wouldn't mind doing a painting of the other side of that pig.

It was actually a real treat to hang out with the hogs. They w

ere very friendly and came up to me when I first got there. A side benefit when painting with animals around, they quickly get used to you and you get to observe how they behave normally. These pigs have it great. They have a lot of forest to roam around freely in, with several great mud pits where they can cool down.

Many thanks to George, and Jason for their hospitality. Special thanks to Jared for showing me around and the recommendation on where to paint.

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