Andrea Doughtie, Rural Painter

Valley Stream  9 x 12 oil on birch panel  unframed but ready to hang  $250

Here’s a painting I did some time ago.  Last September I spent a beautiful morning by the side of a rushing stream.  I’m nuts about rocks since they pretty much paint themselves.  And I got almost all of the piece done while I was on site.

We’ve had such a delightful two weeks here in Pasadena.  We came out for the  wedding of Ed’s niece, Terryn Westbrook an actor, and her sweetheart, Jon Button, a very successful guitarist.  We never saw so many glamorous people in one place, including David Lynch.  It was a great event and also a mini-family reunion with Ed’s sister’s family.  Since the wedding we’ve had a glorious time with our son, daughter-in-law and two grandsons.  We’ve gone to a lot of incredible restaurants with very different interesting dishes (Kimchi tacos anyone?) And we’ll really have to do a lot of penance for all the calories.   Ed and I have gone to the Norton Simon Museum, the Armand Hammer, the Pasadena Museum of Calif. Art and the Huntington Museum as well as numerous galleries.  The most helpful to me was the Franz Bischoff show at the PMCA.  I never heard of him but absolutely loved his landscapes and his still lifes.  Now I’m eager to get back into my studio and play with my palette knife.  Gavin showed me how to use a sketching program on my ITouch a la David Hockney.  I’m taking baby steps with it but if I ever get comfortable I plan to get an IPad.  It would be wonderful to be able to travel with a small device instead of easel, paints, etc.  Maybe if I’m ever happy with anything I do on the ITouch I’ll post it.

We had hoped that our fifth grandchild would arrive during our visit. That  doesn’t seem likely to happen before we leave tomorrow morning for home where they’re expecting about 20 inches of snow. Goodbye lotus land.

Diva   oil over casein on birch panel  6-1/2 x 9  $250

Last summer  when Gavin was here we went to the nearby alpaca farm to take photographs.   When I downloaded the pictures I was delighted to see this animal looking so self satisfied.  Alpacas really are adorable anyway and I thought the expression on this one was priceless.  Right now the painting is in the local post office where I have a show  every year or so.  I used casein in the early stages of the painting.  It lends itself to detail but I like to finish with oil glazes for extra depth.

Filly  oil on birch panel 18 x24″  unframed but ready to hang $500

This painting is going off today for the Christmas show at the community gallery in Lebanon, NH so I thought I should put it up.  It’s my first horse painting–something I’ve been meaning to try.  For the horse I did a grisaille underpainting and added color in thin glazes so I could control the subtleties of tone, light and shadow;  the foreground and background were put on more directly.    There’s a beautiful horse farm in Strafford and in the spring particularly the fields are full of mares with their colts and fillies.    When I was young the one thing I could draw with any accuracy was the horse head on the cover of “Blue Horse” notebook paper.  I had a horse and was obsessed with all things equestrian.   I’d surely break something if I tried to ride now but I have such pleasant memories of  roaming all over the rural area in Georgia where I grew up.  My hope is that someone who’s an equine enthusiast will see the painting and snap it up.

A Lake in Maine   9 x 12″ oil on birch panel  unframed but ready to hang $200

In August we joined friends in Rangeley, Maine at a lakeside house they had rented.  We had a great time.  Our hosts were a composer/clarinetist and his wife, a violinist.  Also there was a terrific pianist and her friend an art historian who coincidentally happens to be a colleague of our son-in-law’s at Hamilton College.  Ed played until he was exhausted and I painted.  Our first afternoon there the weather looked threatening but I was so eager I dashed down to the dock anyway.  Just after I had blocked in the first layer the heavens opened up and filled my field easel with water.  The others rushed to help me pack up but that was it for the day.  Later I finished it in my studio and since it wasn’t really the painting I wanted I added a little element for fun.

Soft     oil over charcoal on birch panel  11 x 12″  unframed but ready to hang $250

Early one afternoon last summer some beautiful cumulus clouds rolled up.  I sat on the porch and “painted” them with powdered charcoal to which I applied fixative. It was a quick method for capturing fast-moving clouds.  Then I gently rubbed oil paint over the charcoal and put in the strip of landscape at the bottom.  I’ve tried the same technique with larger pieces but haven’t liked the look nearly as much.  Also, it’s a lot of work to rub paint in over a large area!

A Scene Below     9 x 12″  oil on masonite  $200

One day last summer I went out by myself to a spot I’d been wanting to paint from for a long time.  It’s by the road, looking down on the village.  For this one I just concentrated on the house, barn and sheds without putting in the other bldgs. in the distance.  Maybe sometime I’ll be back and paint the whole village.   There are so many gorgeous vistas around here.

Here’s another kitchen painting.  I thought dried figs would be good since they last forever and don’t wilt.  I liked the look of them in the plastic wrapping.  The background is a laminated (and treasured) cutting board that our son made for us when he took shop in middle school.

Dried Figs    oil on claybord 5 x 7″ unframed  $100

Cadenza    oil on birch panel   36″ x 48″    $2000  unframed,  ready to hang

All winter after Ed broke his leg I escaped to the studio when I wasn’t needed and worked obsessively on just one painting.  It’s larger than most and I’ve stayed with it much longer–scraping down and repainting over and over.  I think I needed some distraction, repeated problems to solve.  It’s another in the cloud series for a show I’ll do in 2012.  It started off with a photo I took late one afternoon but very little of the photo remains.  Compositional structure and the path of light offered the challenge and I invented clouds where they would fit my purpose.    I considered other titles, like “Carried Away” or “Extravaganza” because I was so taken over by the whole process.  I hope some of my frenzy is reflected in the painting.

Three Tomatoes  oil on claybord 5×7″  $100

Here’s the latest in my kitchen series.  I can’t believe how much longer it sometimes takes me to do a tiny still life than to slap down a landscape!  The tomatoes were pretty much finished before I was.  I did a grisaille underpainting for this one because when you paint something red it’s hard to lighten it afterward without making the light parts too pink.  Anyway, I had fun with it.  That’s a box top the butter dish is resting on.