Painting with a big brush and lots of paint

Do you mind if I share something with you? I've been keeping a secret since late last winter and now Im ready to go public, to crack open the door to my studio and welcome visitors to my particular journey as a painter. Let me share this with you by telling you a short story that begins one day in January of last year on a painting trip to Eleven Mile Canyon here in Colorado.

I was near stir crazy and quite ready to get outside one sunny January day and so I packed my painting rig and made the drive west of Colorado Springs to Eleven Mile. My friend Felip had been telling me about earlier in the winter how fabulous the views were with the ice breaking and the snow on the rocks and I decided to make the trip and to take watercolors rather than oils. When I arrived in the canyon I immediately saw the ice was off the river and was a little bummed-waited too long. I set out and made several small paintings of trees and bits of willow poling through snow and generally enjoyed the day until the light became dramatic in the later afternoon and I prepared to try a quarter sheet larger effort of some of the fantastic light. My watercolor went south on me and I didn't have time to start over, so I took out a tube of white gouache and set about trying my first gouache in the field. Truthfully, this was to be my first gouache of anything except the endless small swatches of color I painted in color theory class in gouache. As I worked I started to lose myself, the familiar but elusive "zone" of painting in near zen state started to settle over me and I was really enjoying my time along the river.

 My painting from the January day along Eleven Mile Canyon still on the board.

My fingers were cold, the light had gone and I new the long drive was still ahead so I gathered my gear and headed for home. When I arrived at my studio I put away my gear and propped up my painting board until morning-a ritual I follow to see the painting fresh rather than jaded by the still too familiar photographic version my mind still envisioned. The next day I was surprised by what I had done out in the field in gouache, something new, something fresh and exciting but I really wasn't wanting to share at that point. I had that all to common feeling that perhaps this was a one shot thing, a flash in the inspirational pan and that the muse might not return.

I had just transitioned from a traditionalist watercolor painter to one who had no care whether I included opaque watercolor, gouache, or not. In fact I had started a new journey as a painter and I started painting a much larger number of watercolor and opaque watercolors on location, more than I was in oils and this was the first time in my painting career this was the case. I was a little scared. The tradition and value placed on oils in a very strong calling in the Western genre and I didn't know how my colleagues, patrons, and collectors would feel about this new path. The transition led to a path that I am still on to this day and still very much enjoying the medium. 

I still paint transparent watercolor and oils and always will; however, sometimes you find something perhaps you were meant for without really even looking. The failure of the transparent watercolor along the Eleven Mile rives canyon is now a happy memory and provided the energy to break through a plateau. As a painter the journey rarely follows a straight line and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I hope your journey is filled with failure and exciting twists and turns! Embrace the transitionary moments.

J.R.