3 Sketches Presented to EAG Beautification Committee
I completed 3 "sketches" for the "Green the Excelsior Through Art" project. When I learned that we had one month to create a 4 ft X 8 ft painting, I had to revise my original idea for the project. I immediately went to McLaren Park, to my favorite area, the redwood grove. The grove is dark, wonderfully fragrant and quiet. Sketch 1 is the result of that inspiration. My thought was that I could complete a landscape in one month but it would have been challenging. And, I decided to do 2 ft X 4 ft "sketches" because I needed to see if the composition would scale up. It turns out now that we will have several months to complete the final piece but I decided to complete this sketch. All the artists received input from committee members on what they wanted to see and a consistent theme was "McLaren Park".
I like collections of things and I like them in order - I find it calming to look at.
And finally, I returned to my "trees posing" theme. This was the original idea that I didn't think I could do in one month. I chose something patriotic because it is an election year and because someone gave me the image of this particular iconic painting, "Washington Crossing the Delaware". The pose, while ridiculous in real life lends itself well for my posing trees. In my painting, the trees are just peeking above the heavy fog. Mt Diablo is the distance but it could also look like the Farrallon Islands. The original painting by Emmanuel Leutze is 12 ft X 21 ft resides in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and has just recently been restored. I love these grand paintings because it ignited people's imaginations. Everyone knew of this story of George Washington crossing the Delaware through difficult circumstances to surprise the enemy, Hessian guards hired by the British empire. Before CNN and TMZ, people would get the story from looking at grand paintings like this one.
I was wondering if Leutze was an abolitionist since he painted an African American soldier named Prince Whipple just below Washington. I remember that Theodore Gericault in his iconic painting, "Raft of the Medusa" painted an African man at the top of the human pyramidal composition because he was an abolitionist.
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| Sketch 1 - McLaren Park, Redwood Grove |
My second sketch was a modification of work i had done previously. I paint trees on discarded pieces of cypress planks that used to hold kamaboko (Japanese fishcake) with the goal of painting 1000 of them. It was a reforestation of the discarded pieces of wood. Currently, I think I have over 600 painted planks. For this project, i painted the plank dimension onto the canvas and created the painting below.
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| Sketch 2 Kamaboko Forest |
I like collections of things and I like them in order - I find it calming to look at.
And finally, I returned to my "trees posing" theme. This was the original idea that I didn't think I could do in one month. I chose something patriotic because it is an election year and because someone gave me the image of this particular iconic painting, "Washington Crossing the Delaware". The pose, while ridiculous in real life lends itself well for my posing trees. In my painting, the trees are just peeking above the heavy fog. Mt Diablo is the distance but it could also look like the Farrallon Islands. The original painting by Emmanuel Leutze is 12 ft X 21 ft resides in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and has just recently been restored. I love these grand paintings because it ignited people's imaginations. Everyone knew of this story of George Washington crossing the Delaware through difficult circumstances to surprise the enemy, Hessian guards hired by the British empire. Before CNN and TMZ, people would get the story from looking at grand paintings like this one.
I was wondering if Leutze was an abolitionist since he painted an African American soldier named Prince Whipple just below Washington. I remember that Theodore Gericault in his iconic painting, "Raft of the Medusa" painted an African man at the top of the human pyramidal composition because he was an abolitionist.
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| Washington Crossing the Delaware Trees 2012 |
When I presented my work at the Excelsior Action Group Beautification Committee, my sense was that the redwood grove and the Washington Crossing the Delaware trees were the favorite of my sketches. In total, 5 artists presented work to the committee and then we left for them to decide which one of the three of each of our works will be selected.
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| Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emmanuel Leutze 1851 |
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| Raft of the Medusa by Theodore Gericault |
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