Painting in the snow - more flakes!

The thing about snowstorms is - there are a lot of snowflakes involved! I decided the previously posted version of this painting didn't do the subject justice, so I added more flakes.

painting in the snow

We had a couple of good snowstorms last weekend. I tested out my latest invention, "Artistic-In-Tent," a portable shelter to cover my pochade box. It's made from an old file folder hanger and a large plastic bag with a hole cut out and clipped to the hanger frame.

The frame is secured to the box with C-clamps.

Here's a video of my first foray into the flakes:

It worked fairly well but still let snow in through the access hole, (you can see me blowing it away in the video) so I added an umbrella and an adjustable plastic valence over the top.

Here is a painting done using this setup.

Early Snow

We finally got a respectable snow the other day so I went out back and tried to get the falling snow against the trees and the layers of landscape behind.  

Here's the paintbox in situ. The thing hovering over the the palette area is a roof I made out of an old canvas stretcher and a piece of plexiglass to protect the paint from getting totally buried in snow.

Sketchbook Pages 12/2016

Fort River footbridge. Watercolor and casein. I started in watercolor, but closed my sketchbook while still wet, causing major blemish. Went in with casein to cover opaquely.

Sketchbook pages 10/19/16

I biked out to the bike trail, which is built on an old railroad line, including a gorgeous truss bridge (a lattice truss, to be precise) spanning the Connecticut River. I rode over the bridge, then pedaled down to a dock on the river to paint the bridge from below. The bridge is somewhat tricky to draw, because although at first glance one would assume that the cross beams would be orthogonal to the sides, they are not, which means that if you draw it right, the perspective looks wrong. I was mostly interested in getting the play of light on the complex nineteenth century ironwork, foliage and river reflections.

Painting in Amherst Historical Society show

I entered a painting in a juried show at the town Historical Society and it won first place!

http://amhersthistory.org/moving-day/

I did the painting many years ago in 1989, and had it in a couple of group shows in Boston back then. It had languished in my basement ever since until the announced theme of the show, "moving in, moving out, moving on" reminded me of it.
It was inspired by the inevitable scene at rush hour in Boston's Park Street station as people trying to get off the antiquated streetcars would have to fight through the mob of blockheads pushing to get on, who seemed unable to grasp the concept that the emptying must precede the filling. It struck me as having larger resonances with the human condition - our societal battles between enlightenment and atavism, and our individual struggles to emerge into the light in the face of our own selfishness and ignorance.

Moving Day

 

Screenshot from Amherst Historical Society website (no longer available online)

Text of webpage:

Moving Day, the Amherst Historical Society’s 4th Annual Juried Art Show

Matthew Mattingly, Let the People Out, oil on canvas.

The Amherst Historical Society invites visitors to view Moving Day, its fourth annual juried art show, open now through December 11, 2016. This is the fourth annual art show hosted by the Amherst Historical Society and Museum. An artists’ reception is scheduled for Thursday, October 6th, from 5:00 to 8:00 pm at the Strong House in conjunction with Amherst Arts Night Plus. The public is invited to attend both the reception and the art show.

We asked artists to present their own visual representation of what it means to move in, move out or move on. Gilles Giuntini, our juror, awarded first prize to Matthew Mattingly for the oil on canvas painting Let the People Out, second prize to Sally Dillon for the hand felted wool piece Amethyst Brook, and third prize to Ellen Kosmer for her mixed media collage What’s Left Behind.