Art Shows

Don't forget-two things; The Art Walk this Friday from 5 to 9. We'll be at Signs Now with new acrylics and new watercolors and new products that Signs Now are helping us with.

Then on Saturday the 21st we'll be up in Craig Montana (weather permitting) at Headhunters Fly Shop for the Caddis Fest. I'll be working on a new acrylic painting and we'll also have all the paintings and products there. Hope you can make it to one of these venues.

Another of my new skinny paintings.
"Middle Fork of the Flathead"

Loren

Crow Creek Falls

Here is one of my new paintings in a skinny format that I talked about on my last post. I think it turned out rather good. Still, composition is a bit of a challenge in this format. But it makes it more fun to try something new.

New paintings and shows

I've done about 5 new paintings in a different format for me. Tall skinny rectangles mainly of streams. A bit of a challenge for composition but fun to do. It will be interesting to see them framed up.

Lots of shows coming up this summer because my "Rep" wants to get out and sell the new products (magnets, decals, notecards, glass, etc.) with my images on them. The first one is a gift show in Great Falls on May 7th. Then the Art Walk in Helena on May 20th. We'll be at Signs Now on Last Chance Gulch for that and then the next day May 21st we'll be in Craig for the Caddis Festival.  We'll be set up in front of our friends at Headhunters Flyshop for that. Weather permitting I'll be demonstrating with acrylics on a new fish painting. Maybe we'll see you there.

Loren

AWS Show

    The 144th international American Watercolor Society show opens April 5th at the Salmagundi Club in New York City.  Yours truly has a painting (First Light Gathering-check my watercolor gallery) in the show.  This painting gave me signature membership in the AWS. Quite an honor and a privilege to belong to the most prestigious watercolor society in the world.  I can check that off my bucket list now and aim for the next one.

Loren

MADE IN MONTANA TRADE SHOW

We will be doing the Made in MT Trade Show in Great Falls this weekend, 25th and 26th. It is at the Civic Center. If you are in the area come and see myself and Susan the rep, we would love to see you. Friday is wholesale day 9am to 5pm, for retail business and Saturday 9am to 4pm is open for the public to come shop. We will have some of my Semi Abstract Acrylic originals and some of my small Watercolor originals. The rep has now got my Semi Abstract work on products. We will be selling notecards, magnets, decals, glass window hangings, glass top wood tables, to name a few. (we can take images of my originals and transpose to glass, really cool.

Hope to see you there,
Loren

new painting water

I've started a new painting that is a scene of the west fork of Rock Creek heading over Skalkaho Pass. If you've never done the drive you should. It's beautiful. The water and rocks in the stream are perfect for a great painting. We'll see what happens with this one. So far so good.

Water is great subject matter and fun and difficult to render. Which brings to mind a workshop I taught in the Scapegoat Wilderness quite a few years ago. Because there wasn't much in the way of subject matter at the elk camp where we were staying we hiked back to the Landers Fork of the Blackfoot River to do some painting. After giving my students various pointers and instructions on how I painted water(reflections, movement, color of rocks and sand beneath the water etc. and emphasizing that water has no color, we were right on the bank of the Landers Fork and you could see perfectly clearly the rocks and sand about six feet down) I was about to turn them loose when one of the students turned to me and said as seriously as could be "I believe everything you said except that water is BLUE" Needless to say his water turned out to be blue. Go figure.

Loren

new paintings

Have recently finished two new paintings that are markedly different in style and medium.

The first one "This is my bull" is a huge 30"x40" acrylic of a wolverine on a bull elk kill with very dramatic lighting-totally dark background.  I've never done such a big tight acrylic and it was quite a challenge. Pretty pleased with the results though.

The other painting is a small watercolor of an old barn with a rooster pheasant in the foreground. Again dramatic lighting-late afternoon kind of light. I am a big fan of dramatic light. Good darks and lights-great contrasts are a must for strong dramatic paintings.

Here's a quote from my rep Susan after she watched me paint over several of my abstract acrylics.

"One can tell an artist not from what he paints but from what he repaints." Hmmmm!