Kate Withers - 'Painting Space'

Finding the right colors for this piece was a challenge..paints are so limited in their range.   Many of the colors used in this piece are straight from the tube.. no white at all.  My inspiration was the intense molten colors of sunset on the rock formations near Torrey.. the beginning of the magic hour.  8x10      oil on canvas Private Collection

  9x12     oil on canvas panel    SOLD Sunset plein-air from just outside the boundary to Bryce National Park in Utah.. a wonderland of colors and shapes. Powell Point is the tallest landform in this area.. over 10,000' and home to a magnificent Bristlecone pine forest.

I think there must be 20 pounds of paint on this by now... have been experimenting with colors and shape changes.. much easier to do in Photoshop than with wet paint layers. Now to refining from this stage and figuring out how I want to do the water. Water needs to be clean and not fuzzy.. so there is work to be done.

Since the rocks are nearly finished [except for fine touches]...  will be painting the water next. If all goes well it should not take long. I put a thin glaze on the water surface already... and when that dries.. I will add more warm glazes and a few floaters on the glassy surface. The time of day and mood indicates a calm surface and a deep dark color with glowing reflections... now I just have to do it :)

Today's effort focused on painting the sky and cooling the formations as they turned from the reflected light. More work to do!

I thought this painitng was going to be rather easy to do...no such luck. I am still working my way through the rock structures and trying to decide if I need to make it warmer or cooler. Slow going on this...here is the current version as of this evening. I am also in the middle of creating a new website from scratch...so my studio time has been usurped. Gotta be done tho!

This small 8x10 oil was painted plein-air late in the afternoon while standing on one of the red dirt tracks found in the area [great for off-road adventures].  Fading sun on the magnificent Powell Point.. the highest plateau in the Bryce region.  This 10,000'+  formation can easily be seen from throughout southern Utah.  The bristlecone pine forests on it's crown are the best I have ever seen... many old patriarchs... and even young healthy trees.  Good to know they are still thriving.    8x10      oil on canvas panel      SOLD       

8x10     oil on canvas panel     SOLD Moonrise over the West.. an experience of the mystic as the full moon majestically rises over the silent desert.. an experience that I have always found to be one of the best reasons to be alive. This piece is a study in contrasts.. the intense saturated orange of a mesa at last light with the cooler darker violet colors of the foreground already in shadow... the simple moon in a pearly sky contrasted with the earth's wonderful complexity and texture. Purple and orange.. a favorite pair.

8x10    oil on canvas panel    SOLD The rich saturated colors of last light in canyon country .. a perfect subject for oils.. and a good reason why oil paints have been used for centuries as the preferred medium for artistic expression.. no other materials come close to the luminous intensity that can be conveyed. This piece is offered for sale with a digital image to represent it.. but the digital image cannot match the lushness of the actual paint colors or how beautiful it is when viewed framed in a personal space... this is where Art comes alive.

8x10     oil on canvas panel     $425 Gallery 24 - Torrey Utah A typical slice of a desert landscape.. an intimate perspective.. creosote bushes and trees surrounded by luminous golden grasses.. garden islands in a swirling sea of gravel and sand.. lavender silvery light falling from the sky.. the last light of the setting sun.

8x10    oil on canvas panel     Sold Gallery 24 - Torrey - Utah The Grand Canyon is so vast .. it's size is not really experienced from the Rim. Living at the Canyon for three years allowed me to experience it in all weather conditions and different lighting conditions. In this painting.. only a very small piece of the Canyon is visible.. increasing the intimacy and detail of one of it's numerous monumental formations. This particular terraced temple-like structure.. shining in the last light of sunset.. is found just below Mather Point and is one of my favorite subjects.. surely to be painted again and again. *Updated painting .. the original older piece was painted over and re-posted here in it's current 2016 version.

8x10      oil on canvas panel     SOLD Nowhere is Nature's music more dramatic than in the beautiful landscapes formed by clouds... the ever-changing forms in the colored light of sunrise or sunset... a painter's inspiration. I remember spending many mesmerized summer hours as a child laying stretched out on the grass watching the clouds turn into fairytales come to life. This painting is the first in a series of the abstract beauty of skies.. skies as majestic music. Here is the underpainting for this piece .. the design ..

6x6      oil on canvas     SOLD Sunset brings out the saturated colors at the Grand Canyon.. this view is not far from the famous El Tovar hotel along the Rim Trail. Capturing this with a digital camera is a challenge.. the colors of golden green of the pinyon trees and red violet of the canyon's shadowed walls seem to be too much for the digital lens... opposites on the Munsell color wheel.. they are a very vibrant pair.

5x7      oil on canvas panel      SOLD A different reality.. the night world rises and orange merges into the blue.. opposites of the color spectrum. How is this possible? We take this kind of ordinary magic for granted.. but it is really incredible when contemplated.  As an observer... what does the boundary of these two worlds look like.. feel like... and what color is it? How can this magic realm be translated into paint? A common art principle explanation is that the half-tone [color change area] is a darker and redder shade of the color in the light and the leading edge of the shadowed area is a tad darker shade of itself. But I feel there is more to this.. there must be a rainbow of colors represented between day and night.. the warm to cool transition. Perhaps a micro view of this limbo land would be very beautiful in a larger painting.. and would certainly be a real challenge.

24x30      oil on canvas in a gold carved frame     $2500    email me for purchase info I wish you could see this in person... the last light on the mesa tops with the subtle reflected colors far below... very difficult to get a good digital image of the nuances. Poetry of the quiet time of day. The incessant winds in this part of the country are finally quiet... the sun driven energy softens to the solace of dusk. This large piece is cradled in a nouveau-modern heavy wood antiqued gold frame with carved vine patterns.

5x7    oil on canvas panel.   SOLD Blue and orange are opposites on the standard color wheel... but on the artist's color wheel.. the Munsell version... the opposite of blue is yellow and the opposite of red-orange is turquoise. Nothing says the high desert like the use of these colors. If you like art history [my minor in college]... check out the succinct work of the late great Maynard Dixon.. a master of color oppositions you can see emulated by many famous landscape painters today.