The 2023 Los Alamos Paint Out, sponsored by the Plein Air Painters of New Mexico, took place July 28 - Aug 2. After the six days of painting we were to choose two paintings to be displayed at the Fuller Lodge Art Center Gallery for the month of August. Visit https://www.papnm.org/2023-Los-Alamos-Paint-Out-and-Show/.
The gallery is in the center of town, a historic building that had once housed a school in Los Alamos. See Oppenheimer had been a student there and in fact liked the area so much that he chose it for the Manhattan Project during World War II at the Los Alamos Laboratory (current name; of course during the War this was all very secret).
On the first paint out day, we headed over to the White Rock Overlook 20 minutes away to paint a scene I've painted many times. There's an alternate view with the Rio Grande down a canyon that I will paint someday. But I would need to trek a little.
I chose instead to paint in the other direction toward the Black Mesa (in the distance).
I had toned the canvas with a light transparent red oxide and added a dynamic symmetry grid (in pencil as usual), expanded with rebatement and divisions that result in self-similar sections.
I wanted to use a rubber tool from Catalyst to apply the oil paint as well as a squeegee. I've been using these tools for a few years, from time to time. Right before the Paint Out though I had taken a workshop with Carole Belliveau and she showed us how to use the Catalyst wedge tool for most of the paint application. I was intrigued so I attempted to do the whole painting using the tool. In fact though first I began with the squeegee with a similar rubber edge (perhaps since it has a longer straight edge which works well with these cliffs). I applied the paint with the squeegee on the Dynamic Symmetry lines after first reviewing the different possibilities by eye. I settled on the following start:
And I continued painting, now primarily with the C wedge tool. I like the feel of the rubber; it can be used to apply the paint either opaquely or transparently. Or it can be used to remove paint if applied more heavily. And I can drag the tool with a little pressure so that the underlying color shows through partially. This is an effect I like. One can see this in some of the sections at this stage:
I used the Catalyst wedge tool to remove paint, by applying it more heavily in the lines in the tree resulting from this heavy 'application'.
I began to add details in the foreground trying to capture the volcanic rocks with foliage around them.
I stopped at this point and took the painting to the motel room to let it rest for awhile. In the end I decided that I didn't like the chaos of the foreground nor the right hand tree (perhaps a mistake, since from this photo, I think the painting looks okay. But I wiped the foreground down and wiped out the tree. I then added a major right hand cliff to replace the tree.) The resulting painting is a wipe-out so I will not publish it here. Sometimes it's better to leave well enough alone. And I don't think I can even begin to get the failed version back to this one.
That afternoon we went to Ashley Pond, where we expected it to be cooler (it was). I met a delightful older long-time resident of Los Alamos. She mentioned that the current pond with its elaborate gardens and walkways was once a simple pond with a dirt path around it. Her husband had worked at the lab. I didn't ask her if they had been there at the same time as Oppenheimer. Her son and grandchild showed up to pick her up and we chatted for awhile. The son loved growing up in Los Alamos and now lives in Albuquerque. So, he stayed near his mother. The town was filled with young children, very different from Santa Fe. Los Alamos is a very nice small town, a one-company town with thousands of workers at the Los Alamos Labs.
Ashley Pond is actually the first and last names of a Los Alamos resident. One can find the name in many places in Los Alamos.
So I did a small of Ashley Pond. Some of the Dynamic Symmetry pencil marks may be seen in the painting. I chose this to be one of the two for the show, giving it the title of Ashley Pond Junior (9x12, oil).
The next day, we started out early, finding a dirt road up a hill near our motel that had 360 degree views. I did two paintings, starting with Dynamic Symmetry grids, one on a toned panel and one on a white panel. The smaller 9x12 was painted of the cliff behind me in this selfie:
I intentionally left this painting very abstract. I ended up feeling it needed work in order for it to be one of my two paintings chosen for the paint out. But I rather liked it. I liked the effect of the toned panel with the color showing through.
In the other direction (north) I painted the major cliffs one can see on the drive up to Los Alamos on a 12x16 panel:
I began with a Dynamic Symmetry grid pencilled onto the white canvas and followed the grid lines for the first paint marks. Then I continued with an extensive use of the Catalyst widget and Squeegee.
After I progressed I took a photo and then checked the grid lines of the Wise Photo App:
The aspect ratio of this 12x16 panel was 4 to 3, but I wanted to see what a fibonacci spiral might look like if superimposed (using the Wise Photo app on my iPhone). One can see the curve spiraling to what I wanted to b the focal point,
I really wanted this to be the painting I used for the gallery show, but in the end, I felt it looked too unfinished without enough contrast. I may work on this some more - and probably will.
The next day after a picnic lunch up at the ski area, we decided to return to Ashley Pond. And the clouds and the breeze persuaded me to paint the scene again - 12x16":
The tree seems to be the focal point. And it did stand out in the scene.
And then the final painting day, I returned to Ashley Pond with a brightly toned panel (something similar to this, a little pinker perhaps as seen in the photograph with the first stage painting):
I ended up with this version below (Ashley Pond Senior, 12x16"). You can see the bright rusty orange tone appearing throughout the painting. This became my second choice for the Paint Out Show. I felt that it was different. Note that I did use the Catalyst primarily with no brushes.
