Speaking of Art Blog

Remember when we used to have to write in elementary school in the fall about what we did on our summer vacation? Well, this blog entry is about what I LEARNED while on my summer vacation. It was a lesson I didn’t go looking for either, it just happened. It was one of those “Ahha” moments for me.

My husband and I took a two week fly-drive trip to southern Washington and all over Oregon earlier this summer. It was wondrous. One of the places we visited, which is actually not heavily visited by tourists, was Oregon’s Painted Hills, a desert area in the center of the state. The hills are so rugged yet beautiful! It’s as if someone took South Dakota’s Badlands and threw a whole bunch of deep red, olive green, and bright tan paint on them. We explored the hills three times in two days -- mid-afternoon, early evening, and then early the next morning.

I was snapping pics all over the place each time we drove and hiked in the park. All three times were bright and sunny. But what I noticed completely by accident when we were there early in the morning on our final visit was what I want to explain. A little background will help here: Back in February of this year I wrote a blog entry titled, I'm a Believer. In that entry I talked about how I was sold on the idea of how my artist friend Vianna Szabo feels an artist should emphasize either color or values (shading) in one piece of artwork, but not both. When an artist tries to do too much of both in one painting, they lose something in the process. The artwork’s message becomes muddied. I do believe this to be true, but in the back of my mind I still had a lingering question: Why is this true? The Painted Hills in Oregon held my answer.

Here is an image I took during our first visit to the Painted Hills. It was mid-afternoon, bright and sunny with the sun straight up overhead. In other words, there were barely any shadows to speak of anywhere. Just look at those colors! I did not create those colors with Photoshop, folks. Those are the real colors. Our jaws were on the ground that whole afternoon. And when we went back in the early evening, the colors were pretty much the same. (The hot temperature was still almost the same too – high 80’s in the afternoon, and low 90’s in the early evening. HOT!)

Very early the next morning when we returned (and the temperature was now in the high 40’s!), the same scene was the real eye opener for me. While I was standing in a slightly different place to take this pic, this is the same set of hills as in the previous picture. But wait, where did all the bright color go? It was still there, but not nearly as brilliant as the day before. Now what I noticed instead of the color were the long dark shadows created by the sun hitting the hills at an angle because it was so low in the sky. Now suddenly the values (shading) took center stage instead of the color. 

Ahha! So that’s why Vianna’s advice works, because it imitates nature. I had never seen such a dramatic real life contrast like that before.  No wonder Claude Monet painted so many haystack paintings at all different times of the day and in different seasons. Perhaps one of the things he was exploring was this concept.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Nature truly says it best. In my artwork, I just embellish the tale. Oh, and I think now I’ll have a new observation I’ll be repeating: Important lessons can be learned even when you’re taking a break from your job while on your summer vacation. You just have to look and think.