Interesting how a change in the weather can influence the mood of a painting. After a week of rain a perfectly sunny, glorious Saturday morning heightened my awareness of the depth of shadows beneath a row of trees. My enthusiasm for the dance of light before me lead me to this interpretation developing a blue theme. I think this painting communicates the joy this day inspired. Pierre Bonnard said "Art will never be able to exist without nature." For many people landscape painting is the only expression of the relation of art to nature. But, of course, nature is as much the subject of abstract art as representational art. Representational landscape painters use abstraction to create images that a viewer will accept as transcriptions of a natural scene. The artist knows his process is one of selecting and arranging details to suit the priorities of composition so that his viewer's eyes move comfortably through the painting. He consciously selects some feature of the scene as a center of interest. A landscape artist works his imagination on the natural setting before him and that is what distinguishes a good representational painting from a photograph. The photographer must shoot many images looking for a composition and a photo that elicits the mood he wants to capture. The artist must search his soul and create a composition that communicates his experience.
An abstract painter does not have the luxury of intriguing a viewer with a sense of familiarity with a place, perhaps a nostalgia for a certain locale. His scene is new territory, hopefully something the viewer has not seen before. He must capture the essence of his experience of nature and his only connection to the view is honesty. An abstract painting that intrigues is one that does not dissemble or parade technical tricks but somehow manages to feel like lived experience.

I had a feeling that moving out of doors was definitely changing how I approach an abstract painting. I saw a distinct difference between what I had done before and what was happening in my most recent paintings. My friend, Jeffrey Boys, who is a real art historian, reminded me that we tend to forget that abstract paintings were once of two very distinct varieties: Abstract Expressionist and Abstract Impressionist. The latter term was coined by Elaine de Kooning to distinguish this type of painting from the action painting of the Abstract Expressionist movement. I have found forms growing more fluid and my brush strokes more reflective of my emotional state. I read that the Abstract Impressionists used short and intense brushstrokes or non-traditional application of paints and textures, done slowly and with purpose, using the passage of time as an asset and a technique. Also, I found that some of my favorite abstract artists Milton Resnick, Philip Guston, Sam Francis, Richard Poussette-Dart, and Jean-Paul Riopelle painted in this fashion. The brush strokes of this movement remind me of the work of Vincent Van Gogh. I find these artists painting with a very high level of emotional intensity.

Painting a large canvas, as this one is, is a different kind of experience. My teacher, Eo Omwake, tells me every inch of the canvas must be beautiful. To maintain interest in every square inch of a large canvas requires a great deal of seeing and reseeing. This is my favorite kind of painting. Quick studies on a river bank or in a pretty meadow are fun, but to me a large abstract is really a universe for a painter to inhabit. To connect to a viewer, an abstract must be totally honest and deeply felt. There is no familiar scene or even familiar detail from the external world for the viewer to grab onto. The only connection between the artwork and the viewer is the truth of human feelings. Though I am not religious, I am spiritual. I believe humans all share the same spirit. Art is not about technique, clever formulaic use of color, but rather about tapping into some essence of experience.
Every painter who paints as I do, knows there is a moment when suddenly he knows that he has tapped into something he must bring forward into the light of day. What follows is a rush to get it down. This is how I overtax my right arm. I think Serotonin is released in the brain just as it is in the brain of a distance runner. I wonder if a scientist has ever studied an artist's brain on "going with the flow." I know I feel such a joy that I cannot put my brush down.

Celebrating Women in the Arts, Opening reception, Friday, May 4, 6 - 9 p.m.

Diane Feisel, Carole Huber, Maria Keane, Rowena Macleod, Maria Mineos, Julia Stratton,Ulana Zalakewycz, and other guests.

To me there is nothing like painting horses. They have so much personality. I remember one beautiful little red filly who would stand patiently in front of me just a few feet away waiting for me to paint her. Horses combine tremendous power and grace. It is small wonder that Degas was famous for painting both ballerinas and horses.

I felt very alive and content on my first day of painting out of doors since last fall. In Delaware, our weather has been quite changeable as is typical of Spring in the Mid-Atlantic, though warmer than usual. This sunny afternoon was all that could be hoped for in mid April. Warm enough to invite my friend to have an ice cream at the University dairy after painting together. The colors in this painting are vibrant reflecting my mood. The whole experience put me in mind of e e cummings' poem

in Just-

by: e.e. cummings (1894-1962)

IN Just- spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame baloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old baloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and
the

goat-footed

baloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

This poem has always seemed to me one of the most joyous celebrations of Spring.

I have recently begun to let myself go with color in painting abstractly. My paintings have always been expressive and colorful, but I am really enjoying the liberty of not being tied to reproducing a subject. Let me add "an external subject." I am finding that my subjects now range from my joy at finding myself out of doors on a beautiful day to working though a difficult emotional moment.

Seeing It All and Making It Your Own Many things come together to make a painter's work uniquely his. When I first started going out to paint, I would drive around all day looking for the subject, some one-of-a-kind, memorable vista. Now I know that what makes a painting memorable is not so much the subject but rather looking at it with Emerson's transparent eyeball. I have seen wonderful paintings of chicken coops, shoes, a white shirt, a slab of beef hanging in a packing house, and so forth. So I burn less gas these days, and now when I go out, I find great subjects just by opening up to what is available to me.
Every artist has his own way of transcribing what he sees. For me, line is a very important element. There are directional lines that guide a viewer's eyes through the painting. An unfortunate composition can stop the onlooker in his tracks or make him feel he has been wandering through a maze. The horizon line is an inescapable fact in landscape painting. And so too are vanishing points where all lines converge. These naturally occur in Nature and are not hard to observe. What is hard to observe is the "lay of the land," where the foreground ends and what delineates the middle and the distant. I find directional lines useful to establish these relationships among elements of a composition.
The kind of line that interests me most are the lines, staccato, long, squiggly, jittery, looping, slicing, that are the artist's chosen calligraphy of the day. These hand movements in relation to a particular subject are what record the movement of the artist's mind in dialogue with his subject. Cy Twombly, a contemporary abstract artist, says of his use of line, "My line is childlike but not childish. It is very difficult to fake ... to get that quality you need to project yourself into the child's line. It has to be felt."
To have the purity of a child's line, in my mind, an artist must be wielding line in the same way a child does, unself-consciously, free again of preconceptions about how line is going to function except at the moment he is painting. If I cannot "feel" the line, I cannot paint the movement of clouds or tree limbs. I want such elements in my paintings to look in flux, not frozen. Movement is one of the hardest things to capture whether I am painting a horse, a person, or a windy day.
Color is another highly idiosyncratic element. You can recognize a great artist by the colors he consistently uses, or at least recognize colors he prefers in a particular period. One artist will paint exclusively with primary colors, another in subtle hues as removed as possible from what comes out of his paint tubes. I love layering color, hard to do without over-mixing and turning the outcome into mud. The color harmonies I find in Nature are infinitely more interesting than any suggested by terms like monochromatic, triadic, complimentary, and so forth.
When artists admire one another's works, it is often for these complexities--arrangements that could never be described by a simple formula. I think to be a "painter's painter," as we say, an artist has to move beyond what is expected to create what has not been seen and could not have been anticipated. I take as the highest compliment, another artist's remark, "You really struggled with this area, didn't you?" And, "You don't get that kind of richness easily."

Everything Seems So Insistent Leave out anything that distracts from your composition. This is a luxury that painters enjoy over photographers. Once your eye finds the focal point of your painting, everything else must be subsumed. I try to go with my first impression and start to work rapidly on the elements that made me want to paint my subject in the first place. Some painters plan with all sorts of conventional composition formulas in mind, but I find this stultifying. When I was a professor, I couldn't lecture from notes. If I did so, my class became deadly boring. I needed a free exchange of ideas to discover the truth of my lecture. And new truths undoubtedly. When I go out to paint, I try to turn off my thinking processes and paint according to the vigor of my first impression. Pierre Bonnard said something like a painting well composed is already half painted. I know for certain that no amount of gorgeous color can make up for a poor composition. My compositions come about by the same dialogue that directed my former lectures.
When I am preparing to paint, I will walk about until something directs me to question its insistence that we communicate. Once I am in from of this bully or seductress, whichever you prefer, I try to feel what it so compelling. This is my composition because my focal point has announced itself. We enter into dialogue. My task becomes to make its surroundings cede to it, this marvel that wants to reveal itself to me. Paul Cezanne talks about painters being able to discover things never before seen in Nature. This intimate dialogue between the painter and his subject is unique, pulsating with life if he allows his own nature to respond fully in an idiosyncratic way.
If you have difficulty finding a focal point, try thinking of your painting as an experiment in memory. Look intently. Close your eyes. Try to recall with your eyes closed what was your strongest impression. Do this twice more and three is the charm. Then, open your eyes and try to paint with vigor your first impressions without stopping to think. Hold nothing back. Make mistakes. That's why we have palette knives--to scrape off the effluvia of enthusiasm.

Green, the Devil's Color Green, the Devil's Favorite Color
When you first try to paint out of doors, you_'re apt to be overwhelmed by the life buzzing around your ears. If it is summer, the season when most of us first venture out, and you live in a verdant spot like Delaware, you_'re apt to feel awash in green. A notion of the demonic nature of 'green' has been around since the Middle Ages, when poets and preachers often made this association. Think of all the demons you_'ve seen represented in green. Any painter will tell you green is the devil_'s color because it is the hardest to control. It also seems to leave the most permanent stain on any article of clothing.
You quickly learn that painters have used many methods to exorcise the evil spirit of green. After you return from your first adventure in the field, you will undoubtedly begin pouring over all the art reproductions you have at hand to see what other painters have done with this seemingly ubiquitous color. That all the leaves on your first tree are not the same color and certainly not a color that comes directly out of one of your paint tubes is a real revelation. When you begin to study paintings, you see that the leaves on trees may not even be green, even in the most faithfully representational landscapes. In the traditional landscape of Italian or Dutch Masters, you might see blue trees in the distance. Among the Impressionists, you will see myriad blues, greens, and yellows, even hints of pink or lavender, as they reach for luminescence. Among the Expressionists, you may see red looping boldly on the side of the tree closest to sunlight. In fact, you will understand that even if you are trying to copy exactly the scene before your eyes, you cannot paint all this verdure merely as shades of green.
Green was my first preoccupation when painting 'en plein air' and like St. Anthony, I rolled round the floor of the Universe while green howled mightily and tried to snatch my soul. But if your painting doesn't reflect the epic madness of this struggle, it will be a sad lifeless affair. Now when I go out, I'm prepared to use any weapon in my arsenal to slay the demon, especially various shades of red. The most useful bit of instruction I was ever told was that red and green mixed, make the darkest black, even darker than the black that comes pure from the tube. If you want to make green dance to your tune, slap some red beneath it, let it harass it around the edges, bleed through, or drip a gaping wound.
But, of course, green is not the only problem that the 'plein air' painter must address. The next hardest thing is what to put in and what to leave out.