Volume 1, Issue 3
  Summer 2004

  Index

Susan Hazard Fine Art  

Summer Update

Palette knife

painting technique

workshops in

Ireland

Painting with oils & palette knife workshops will be scheduled in Ireland for the late autumn.

Openings will be limited.

For more information, contact Susan Hazard at susan.hazard@att.net or in Ireland, please contact Betty Taylor at : (071) 9165138

Workshops will cover selecting colors, setting up the paint palette, preparing the painting surface, using palette knives as painting tools, choosing subjects, and learning how to use palette knife painting as a new technique.

 

   

News Update...

Travels in the spring were wonderful! I taught a workshop in palette knife painting with oils County Sligo, and visited with friends in Ireland. There was time to stop in at the various galleries representing my artwork, and some lovely days spent in gardens in Great Britain. The weather was delightful...lots of sun and very little rain. The exhibit at the Princes Arms Country House Hotel in Trefriw, North Wales unfortunately did not take place. The paintings for the show did not arrive at the framer in Ireland due to the Irish post being on strike, so the show has been rescheduled for hopefully this autumn. Also, I am planning a move of residence and studio. The Santa Barbara house will be up for sale in the next few months and I am looking for a new home and studio space in

Washington state, along the northwest coast. You never really know how much you have accumulated until it’s time to move! The studio alone has been packed into many boxes, and more to d pack. More on my plans in future newsletters. In the meantime, enjoy our summer, and always take time for the beauty that surrounds you.

Enjoy!

 


Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art.”

Leonardo da Vinci

 

“Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. To perform this difficult office it is sometimes necessary for him to sacrifice happiness and everything that makes life worth living for the ordinary human being.”

Carl Jung

In the studio...
Painting often is a solitary craft. Writers, poets, composers...many creative endeavors and activities are not a group activity. It is important to listen to one’s own inner voice, and this usually means time alone. When I am not in a classroom, or painting outdoors fielding questions from curious onlookers, I am by myself in my little studio. Not always by myself, however, as my eighteen pound cat, Spikey, often keeps me company. But in his inscrutable cat like way, he gives me quiet time to work out my creative challenge for the day.

I begin the painting process with opening the top row of awning windows of my 10’x12’ wood garden shedi, and opening up my palette saver plastic box . I squeeze out every color I can find in

 my storage drawer, lay out an array of palette knives and set my painting surface on the wood easel. That’s the easy part. The next step is much more difficult. Where is my inspiration?

Looking for painting ideas, I shuffle through all my garden photographs, and look at photographs of gardens in books. I swivel around on my chair and look out the studio windows at my garden, with lily-of-the-nile, daylilies, and daisies blooming. I ask Spikey sometimes...he just blinks his yellow-green eyes at me, and goes back to sleep. Something appeals to me, perhaps overlooked many times before: a certain color combination, dappled light on a path, or a seat in the sun. The proverbial light bulb over my head lights up, and I’m painting!
Painting from photographs...

Photographs are a wonderful source of inspiration and knowledge. If I am not able to paint plein air, outside in nature, I bring nature into the studio through photographs. As I travel, home or abroad, I take photographs of gardens and landscapes to use as inspiration for my paintings. The weather, travel schedule or lack of equipment can inhibit the opportunity to set up outdoors and record a scene. Photographs, my own or someone else’s, give me the opportunity to record a lovely moment in time.

The painting below, Bluebell Woods, was painted from a photograph taken by my friend, Cathy Waddell, during a walk on the hillside behind the Princes Arms Hotel located in Trefriw, North Wales. It was early spring, the bluebells carpeted the woods with their transitory and almost ethereal blueness, and I was captivated.
I didn’t have my painting supplies with me, the mystery of the path leading onward beckoned to both of us, and who knew what the weather would be in ten minutes? A photograph taken of the beautiful scene took a moment, hence becoming a reminder and an inspiration for the painting.

The only problem with painting well known scenes are discrepancies in the view. A number of liberties were taken with this view, evident to those who walk this path often. Yes, artists edit. It is our pleasure and right to paint in the style we enjoy the most, or are most able to do. I prefer the Impressionist’s joy in recording the effects of light upon objects, and I manipulate the image to produce a feeling or create an ambiance, rather than record reality.

A walk through the Welsh bluebell graced woods. Always remembered, forever a lovely moment in time.