An update on the final details of the Rose Wagner Show.

The show will run from September 8^th through the 27^th of October at the Rose Wagner Art Gallery (138 West 300 South SLC). The gallery is open to the public Monday through Friday from 9 AM to 5 PM except during private or ticketed events. There will be an opening reception on the 8^th from 6 to 9 PM. Anyone who can make it is most welcome. This is my first local show, and the largest collection of my original oils (fifteen in all, see list in earlier post) ever.

Special thanks to Quent Cordair Fine Art and Jeremy Dover for shipping paintings back to Salt Lake for the event and to Sara for talking me into the idea in the first place, freeing up extra time for me to work, putting up with late-night painting sessions, setting up bryanlarsenfineart.com, maintaining this blog, allowing me to turn our front room into an art studio (with all the clutter and paint fumes that come with it), acting as critic, editor and creative consultant, a staggering number of other indispensable items and for not encouraging me to “Get a real job”.

Shawn Rossiter, editor and writer for 15 Bytes E-zine (link at right), sent out an email asking those of us acquainted with his and his staff’s fine work to give props. I am unaware of any more relevant publications about art in Utah than their monthly issue. It is comprehensive, fun to read and covers a wide variety of topics. My favorite section is the ‘Artist’s Studio’ - interviews and photos of artist work areas are always interesting. If you have an interest in Art in Utah I highly recommend subscribing.

Time is up, but ‘The Artist’s Son’, the last painting for the show, is finished. Actually, it was finished last Saturday. The background, as promised, is about as simple as it gets. A few subtle, warmish colors to compliment the composition and enough value gradation to make the lighting on the figure make sense. Add some shadows so the little guy doesn’t seem to be floating mysteriously in the air, and there you have it.

I really think the simplified background was the right decision now that I see the final result. The scrap photos are chaotic by comparison and all the extra stuff going on behind the wee artist is just distracting. I recognize that there is a considerable amount of bias involved, but this has turned out to be one of my personal favorite paintings.

Just as I hypothesized, work on a painting of a two-year-old actually proceeds much slower if the model is in the vicinity of the canvas. Progress continues, however, and everything but the background is complete.

The aforementioned background will be a study in simplicity, in part to keep the painting from getting too busy and in part due to time constraints. Even if the background were finished by the end of the week, there is a good chance some portion of this piece will still be wet when it gets put in to the frame (not unlike a real toddler…if you were to attempt to frame one. Turner Prize… here I come!) .

As for the upcoming show at the Rose Wagner, here is a list of the fifteen paintings that will be on display:

The Anchorage

How Far We’ve Come

Flight I

Vantage Point

By the Fountain

Sisters

Stefanie

Ready for the Day

Waking Among the Clouds

Girl in Brown Skirt

Among the clouds III

Among the Clouds IV

New Year’s Eve

Stargazer

The Artist’s Son, possibly still wet (the painting, not the boy)

An excerpt from Damon….

“As part of my gallery in San Fran’s online art-education outreach program, I will be participating in a temporary blog called the Artist’s Studio, where I walk readers through a day-to-day process of painting my new painting, from beginning to finish. For some of you, this is old news, as I’ve done it before. But all my commentary powers will be focused on this task for the next couple weeks, so I would like to refer you to it if you are at all interested in following along. Since you all know me well, it will come as no surprise that I tend to talk less about proper art and more about Coco Puffs in these things. And yet they keep inviting me back. A prize to anyone who logs the most unusual and provocative comment in the “leave a comment” section. ”

Please head over there for what I’m sure will be a lively art/cereal discussion.

The show that Bryan has been working so diligently on for the last nine months now has an opening date! Mark your calendars everybody and plan to be in downtown Salt Lake City on September 8th. The Rose Wagner will host a reception for the artists that night and display their work for the next couple of months. Don’t forget!

I realized this morning, as I was getting set up to begin work, that I had, in fact, used the last of my Ultramarine Blue while finishing the sky on ‘Stargazer’. I needed the color to paint both the shirt and the pants. In addition, I occasioned to glance at the calendar and noticed it was the 12^th, the day I was supposed to pick up the two paintings that have been in the Palmer Gallery for the ISA show the past two weeks. There are only two art supply stores in Salt Lake that carry Old Holland oils. Reuels, now more than ever my least favored of the two, is only a few blocks from the Palmer Gallery, so I figured I would zip downtown, grab the paintings and the paint when the gallery opened at 11, and be home in time to start working by 11:30. I spent an hour tidying the house in anticipation of Sara’s return tonight, and left the house at 10:30.

Things began to go wrong when I neared the gallery and was reminded by the throngs of pedestrians clogging streets that the city park, across the street, was home to the downtown farmer’s market Saturday mornings. I slowly made my way down the last block, managed to convince the parking attendant, who was eager to charge me $5 for the usually free parking lot in honor of the ‘Event’, to let me double park for five minutes while I loaded up a couple of paintings, and walked up to the door. I was greeted by a handwritten sign informing me that, for whatever reason, the gallery would not be opening until noon. Undaunted but slightly annoyed, I drove back through the crowd, I believe without hitting anyone, and headed for Reuels.

This particular store has slowly fallen out of favor with me for a series of reoccurring stock abnormalities, such as carrying various length stretcher bars that are incompatible with each other or, on three separate occasions, having only one 30 inch stretcher bar (how does that even happen?), and the surprising ability of all the sales staff to vanish completely as soon as I am ready to pay. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised that the only Old Holland color they were out of was Ultramarine Blue. The eager fellow ‘helping’ me didn’t hesitate to relate that they had been out for a week or so. I asked if they had any glass palates (I have been meaning to pick one up) and received a “No?” accompanied by a look that suggested I must have dreamt that such a thing existed, but he was too polite to mention it out loud. Now somewhat daunted and considerably more annoyed, I left.

Since I still had 45 minutes to kill before I could get my paintings back, I drove across town to The Peterson Art Center. I grabbed two tubes of blue from the fully stocked Old Holland display case, and selected a glass palate from the four varieties on the shelf and had a friendly chat with the clerk, who was working on a little landscape on a French easel by the register in between helping customers.

Things were shaping up…I thought. I had an early lunch on the way back to the Palmer Gallery, dodged pedestrians on my way into the parking lot, re-convinced the attendant to let me park, grabbed the paintings and was on my way. By then it was 12:30. No more than two hundred yards onto I-15 for the typically 25 minute drive home; traffic came to a dead stop (people never seem to get tired of crashing into each other, though I can’t personally understand the appeal). I pulled into my driveway at 1:45.

So, I had my precious Ultramarine blue, but three hours less time to play with it before spending the evening reacquainting myself with Sara and Asher. I didn’t manage to finish the figure, but I did get the shirt done and had enough time left over to dash off this somewhat therapeutic post. With any luck I can work on the pants tomorrow. Until then, here is the best photo I could get of the painting’s progress. Enjoy, unless you are currently driving south on I-15 in which case, please, turn off your computer.

It is Friday, day 5 of artsy-fartsy week at Chez Larsen. This morning I took a break from painting and went mountain biking in Mueller Park Canyon with my two younger brothers. By the time I got back and had my colors mixed it was three in the afternoon. In spite of the late start, I managed to make some progress on the new piece, finishing the feet and the hair by eleven PM.

Sara and Asher should be home tomorrow evening, by which time I am hoping to have the entire figure completed.

It is day four of the left-home-alone-to-paint extravaganza, and day one of work on ‘The Artist’s Son’. I apologize for the poor quality of this image, but I had to take the photo in fairly dim light to avoid reflections off of the fresh paint that would have made it nearly useless. Even so, you can see it was a productive day.

The entire time I couldn’t help thinking of Damon’s comments a few years ago while he was working on a portrait of his nephew who, I believe, was about Asher’s age. He said something about really having to pay close attention to the scrap, since all the features were so round and sausage-like. He wasn’t kidding. Toddlers may be adorable, but while painting them you really have to forget everything you know about adult anatomy and proportion. It is no wonder most classical paintings of children are so bizarre looking. The only way I can get Asher to hold still long enough to shoot scrap is to do it while he isn’t paying attention. And he is a relatively calm kid for his age. Before photography I can’t even imagine how you could have painted a two-year-old using an actual two-year-old as the model.

As it turns out, the stars didn’t have to wait after all and I ended up finishing this painting last night.

So, now I will turn my attention to ‘The Artists Son’. These will definitely be the last two pieces finished before the Rose Wagner show in Salt Lake. I found out yesterday that the show is scheduled to open on September 8^th which means these two paintings have to be dry enough for a little re-touch varnish, photographed and framed a few days before then. This will be my first real local show, and If everything works out, there will be 16 paintings featured, several of which have been in San Francisco at the Quent Cordair Fine Art gallery for as many as three years