Painting on location is like a sport. You need to have the right gear and be organized. When there is wind, the easel must be tied down with a weight. I have taken off my boots and filled them with rocks to keep everything grounded. I have built shelters to keep the rain off and stayed overnight on-sight. Once I painted in 102 degree summer sun at noon in the coutryside near Tholenet. I set myself up to paint a hillside. I painted as fast as I could knowing that I could not stay for long, using my palette knife to spread paint on the canvas and then pushing it around quickly with my brush. The blur of the heat made the paint so soft, and the ravages of the hot sun and my thirst transposed themselves into the painting. Another time I painted the full moon by candlelight over Westsound between 2 and 5 in the morning. I couldn’t really see the colors I had mixed on my palette, and could only see dark and light contrast on the canvas as I worked. It was exciting to go to sleep and wake up when it became light to see what I had blindly painted. I like to thrill seek when I paint. I worked on a large canvas at Haida Point once when I lived on Orcas Island in the San Juan Islands. It was four feet by six feet and certainly was a large undertaking while grappling with the elements. I remember reading about Bering Sea fisherman during the 1920s and how they needed to sail, fish and contend with the weather all at once.

Before anything is put on the canvas I spend a long time mixing complementary colors, and work hard at being true to the colors I see in the landscape. I really do begin with a blank canvas, and draw quickly with the paint brush. I call it “draw-paint” and often is done by using long sweeping gestures and spreading large amounts of paint with my big brushes so that I can cover the canvas with a ghost that is the essence of the landscape. The light is captured from the very start for it will quickly change if I don’t put it down immediately. The painting develops as the disparate parts of the landscape coming together on the canvas and sometimes it seems to appear all on it’s own. PM