“Oregon Aspen Grove” 40″ x 60″ oil and wax on canvas – $4,500
When I attended the recent opening of the Portland Art Museum Rental/Sales Gallery show, a volunteer asked me if I ever changed styles of painting. She was obviously new because I have changed my styles, techniques and images many times, but of course she wouldn’t have been around for most of them during the fifty years I have been with the gallery.
I have been painting a lot of landscapes in recent years and most have them have had aspen trees in them. I love painting these trees, mostly because the white bark and dark markings make a wonderful graphic image. The other reason is that the trunks bend and lean with many branches of various shapes and sizes to provide even more compositional possibilities.
Every time I think I will go on to expand my variety of images, I’m drawn back to the aspens. It is important to me to keep my creativity fresh even though I’m painting the same images, so I’m currently working on a totally new series of them, more abstract and graphic. I’m really excited about them, but I won’t post them until I’ve completed several. The painting above is the most recent, and the last painting I have done in the older series.
