Last week, I went back to an oil paining that had been left to dry a few weeks ago, windows wide opened, perfect conditions to work… and I hit a wall. After hours of work, I was exhausted and unsatisfied with the result. Everything felt heavy: the process, the painting, even the paint on the brush. Something was amiss.

But what? Since I want to take my work to a bigger format, I need a medium that will adhere to canvas, or some other larger grounds than paper. Oils and acrylics can do that, and I wanted to get back to oils.

I did my studies with this classical technique, learning to admire the masterpieces of the past six centuries. That’s quite an impressive heritage and thinking about it, I realized that in the back of my mind, oil painting had been set by default as the best way to paint, certainly the most valuable or noble one.

But is it really? In 2018? For what I want to do now?

The quality of what I want to express is light, colorful, vibrant, and fluid. Oil is a rather heavy bodied medium.

My vision is intuitive: I must be able to be spontaneous, and a water-based medium would probably suit my needs better. I’ve used acrylics before, but not a lot, and more often on paper than canvas. The quality and range of this material has expanded a lot since I did; it’s worth the try.

So I will be putting grand old oils aside for now and will be focusing on acrylics, in the freest manner I can imagine. Bold, colorful, fresh.

To create is to make choices, constantly reassessing them in relationship with our vision. Is this choice supporting the vision I have? That’s what I intend to find out.

About choices: the best teaching I ever took on the creative process was with Robert Fritz. Whether you are an artist or not, understanding and applying the principles of the creative process in this masterful way can help you create what you want in your life.
https://www.robertfritz.com/wp/programs/choices/

Louise Jalbert, “Foliage in Appletree” oil on canvas, work in progress, 2018, 30 x 30 inches
(detail)
“Some foliage”, and “Water effect experiment” 2018, Acrylic on canvas paper, 16 x 20 inches

If you were a force of nature, which one would you be?

A wise friend came up with this question recently. A great question that keeps resonating within me, firing my imagination.

Today, I would be the wind.

Wind brings motion and change. It carries the birds, disseminates pollen and seeds, fertilizing the earth. It chases the clouds away to let the sun in. And it brings them back so we can have rain.

There is motion and change in the studio also, as I am circulating between ideas and techniques, past and present work.

The above painting was started a few years ago. I got back to it this week with a fresh eye. Something needs to be improved, but it’s breathing again now.

How about you? If you were a force of nature, which one would you be?

Louise Jalbert, “Foliage in Appletree”, work in progress, 2013-2018, Oil on canvas, 30 x 30 inches

I’ve put the winter gouaches aside and I’d like to do some bigger, bolder work now. So here’s a start: the above oil sketch is somewhat disheveled and chaotic. I am searching and trying out new ideas and not all of them will be good.

My aim is to expand my expression with new means. In order to find those new means, I am experimenting with different formats and techniques: interesting things happen when I play with these variables.

Is it merely a question of format or technique? Surely not, but stepping into another painting territory always yields new insights, challenging my habits. It takes me on a path of exploration and discovery.

 Oil Paint:
There’s no other medium as luscious and sensual as oil paint. I work on a glass palette: it’s great for mixing colors and easy to clean. Oil is messy, but the smell of it is like perfume to me, though a potent one!

How can I catch the smell of trees, the intricacy of bare branches, the wind whispering through them? How can I bring you, the viewer, into a space, a world of colors and brushstrokes that will make you stop and feel it all?

Those are the questions that drive me. Stay tuned.

Louise Jalbert, “Branches”, study, 2018, Oil on canvas, 26 x 31 inches

This Eason’s work is coming to an end. Spring is almost here, and everything I have been looking at and painting in the past few months will be gone very shortly.

Believe it or not, I could go on painting winter: the colors and spaces I have been studying are making their way into me and I am beginning to see where I can take the work farther. That will make for a very good start next winter. But before I put the sketches away, I want to take a long look at them and ask myself:

What have I learned that I can apply to the next body of work?
What do I want to bring forward, and how?

Some things I don’t command: they simply happen after I’ve done the work of careful observation. Then stepping back and reviewing the work also fosters new ideas.

So now it’s time to wrap up my sketches, but not before I take from them what will grow with the next season.

Louise Jalbert,  “Blue Shadow”,  2018,  Gouache on paper, 11 x 14 inches

 

Winter is slowly relenting, notwithstanding its customary uproars. Though snow keeps falling, it now melts soon after falling to the ground. As it does, it becomes gray and brown.

March is a month of grays, as if winter was fading out, and its colors are too. On cloudy days, the whole color range seems to become a nuance of gray. Yet even in this chromatic austerity, nature offers a lesson of abundance and variety.

As a painter, it’s an opportunity to deepen my understanding of neutral colors and values. In painting, values are the relative lightness to darkness of a color, for example a very pale brown to an almost black brown.

This is an exercise in subtlety, in appreciating the bare beauty that is unfolding before me. As winter is departing, it seems to be washing out all colors before nature sets itself for their comeback in the great renewal.

 

Louise Jalbert, “Early March Colors”, 2018, Gouache on paper, 8.5 x 11.5 inches

As much as I’d like to move forward with this painting, my pace is that of a snail right now. It takes me time to assimilate what I observe and transform it into a painting.

Is it better than the first one? Maybe, but that is not the point. What matters is that I did several of those, and doing so, I had a deep conversation with the winter blues,
observing, learning and infusing my mind and hands with forms and colors..

Now, I will give this a rest, and let my memory absorb while I work on something else.

Here in Québec, life is quietly preparing for spring underneath the frozen soil, and so is my process right now. Patiently germinating.

Louise Jalbert, “Winter Blues, Study # 5”, 2018, Gouache on paper, 8 x 10 inches

To learn, we need repetition. That’s the way our brain processes new information.
https://www.brainscape.com/blog/2011/05/repetition-is-the-mother-of-all-learning/

So I must be deep into learning because I started this sketch wanting to take it further than the previous one, but I didn’t go very far. It’s a new and complicated subject, so obviously, I need to do more studies before I know it well enough. At this stage, it’s normally a bit of a struggle, with too many things calling for my attention, not knowing yet what to choose.

But I did learn a few things: the colors in the background are better and so are the blue branches in the foreground. That’s where I am for now.

So patience and curiosity will be required, and a lot of elbow grease. Probably with some repetition along the way.

Louise Jalbert, “Winter Blues, study #2”, 2018, Gouache on paper,  11 x 14 inches

I’ve been meaning to paint the winter blues.
Blues and whites and pinks.

After a fresh snowfall, when it is sunny, the white ground reflects these colors, sometimes strikingly. It can be quite beautiful, especially at sunrise or sunset. February and March are the best months to see that, because the sun is stronger and there is more light.

In this sketch, I’ve put down some ideas about color that I’d like to develop.

It is carefully observed and rather descriptive, but that’s the way I often start. Minutely, I get acquainted with a subject, and make my way into its various features. I want to know them so well that they become imprinted in my memory. Once I have internalized the visual reality, I can focus on extricating the vision it has inspired me.

So I will be doing such studies for the next few weeks, while developing my vision of the winter blues in the process.
There are only two months left for this season…at least for this year.

Louise Jalbert, “Winter Blue, sketch #1”, 2018, Gouache on paper, 11 x 14 inches.

“You Can Observe a Lot Just by Watching”

That quote from Yogi Berra sounds obvious, even simple. And it is.
That makes it easy to do.

https://baseballhall.org/hof/berra-yogi

This is what I do, watch and paint, paint and observe.

It’s easy to get caught in detail when you paint from observation. But what I want to paint is not literal, it is not a photographic image. It lies beyond what I see and within what I do.
So, I observe and I paint, and then I look at what I have painted. Observe that and keep painting and observing.

I get to see a bit more with each sketch.

In the meantime, with the Hollidays coming up, I thought you might enjoy reading or giving this book: “Still Life” by Louise Penny
https://www.amazon.com/Still-Life-Louise-Penny/dp/0312541538

While honing your skills in observations of another kind, it is gripping and amusing. I never read crime novels but Lori Sailata’s suggestion was worth listening to. I hope you enjoy.

https://medium.com/@sailiata

Louise Jalbert, Afternoon in November, Sketch # 6, 2017, 11 x 16 inches

I’ve been working on variations of this image for two weeks now.
I am trying to clarify the vision I have, a glimpse of eternity that caught my eye, one late afternoon in November.
I want to paint something elusive that lies beyond what I see.

In my effort to catch it, I keep focused on the trees, the bushes, the light. Determined, I juggle with colors, composition, scale and brushstrokes.

Still, it eludes me.

I may be trying too hard. But I know there is a process happening here: once I have done several studies, enough to know this particular theme by heart, then I will be able forget about the represented elements in the picture. And when my hand will start to have a mind if it’s own, then I will reach a balance of attention and abandon that makes it all breathe.

Or shall I say dance?

I like to dance, and I can see the similarities here. First, there is a warm up. Then there are steps to be learned, and practiced until your body knows how to move with the music. That’s when expression jumps in.

 

One early sketch:
Much looser than the colored gouache above, it is closer to what I am aiming for.
Drawing in black and white in a small scale allows me to focus on the essential.

 

In the studio, I am stepping on my own feet right now.
But I hope to be dancing soon.

Louise Jalbert, “Afternoon in November, Study #5”, 2017, 12.5×15 inches  and  “Afternoon in November”, sketch, felt marker on paper, 3 x 3 1/2 inches