Dear Blog Readers,
I am back after too long with the promised painting of the spring verbena at our place.  This was done before the last posted painting and shows the small pasture at our place in early spring when the verbena were just getting started.  Note how sedate the colors and the abundance compared to how loud and lush it got later.  Actually, I like this one better.  It rings a tad truer just because it is not so garish.  But the other one is true too, just wilder color because that's the way it was.  We may never see verbena like that again.

I've been busy painting and working on sculpture and have more to show you and plan to get it on the blog faster than I have been.  I get going on the blog and then I think I am overwhelming people with too many posts, and then I get lost in what I am doing and forget about it.

I did give a demonstration last month to the Trinity Art League in San Antonio and enjoyed it very much.  I talked to the group about how to put a plein air kit together and what colors to take with you, and then showed them how I amend plein air works I have done in the field.  I was gratified to have 8 people sign up for a half day workshop plein air and seven of them actually show up.  We worked on a scene along the San Antonio River in Brackenridge Park.  It was of the old Number One Pump House which was built back in the 1800's as a source of clean water for the city.  It is now overgrown with foliage and is quite picturesque and very paintable, although we are told it needs desperately to be renovated.  I'll send that painting along soon.  I just finished the one I started at the workshop and will photo it soon. 

I am always appreciative of any feedback you have to offer.  If nothing else, it lets me know you have seen the blog.

Thanks!
Jay

Big Bend

Readers,

I know I said I'd post more sculptures, but I forgot I had this painting which I thought needed to be posted. It's an oil, done on gessoed canvas, and is 16x20, which is all different from my usual painting base.

Several of my artist friends and I made a couple of trips out to Big Bend in the late winter a few years ago and while most of those plein air paintings are sold, this painting, done from photos taken on those trips, is still around. Actually, I did this about a year ago after attending a workshop by a famous western landscape artist who came to the Coppini. She works from photos and I decided to try that, since I rarely do that at all. I think she had a good influence on me.

The purple verbena here is still a riot of lavender color all over our place. I've had a couple of groups of painters come out to paint but I can see that the plants are starting to get leggy and it won't be long before Steve will insist on mowing it all. Well, we need to let the grass, such as it is, grow without being shaded out by flowers. Texas is really nice when the rains come regularly.

Spring in Brush Country

Hey all,

I have been a little slow to get something new on the blog lately so I thought I'd show this old piece which is another dragged from the "fix" bin. I've had so much fun with what's come out of that box that I find myself leafing through it weekly. Most of them don't need much to make them more finished and I am tickled that with passing time, I've learned to see the problems and be able to address them so easily. Time matures the artist?

This is another plein air piece, done several years ago, in the early spring on a ranch way south of San Antonio. It needed only a little addition to the vegetation and some darks in very small places to bring it up to par.

I hope you enjoy it.

Jay

South Texas Phlox

Dear Folks,

This is a rarity for me. It is a painting done plein air and it is on canvas, 16"x20". I did it a few years ago at a ranch south of San Antonio where the owners encouraged as many wild flowers as they could allow to grow and still run cattle on the place. At this particular time, the phlox were the dominant color on the landscape, but there were splashes of other color from a few bluebonnets, some sort of irisy looking thing and some white daisy-like flowers. Wish I could be more specific but I didn't get their names.

I have been tempted more than once to rework this piece because it is so Eastery looking. It doesn't look real I think. But as with the other flower landscapes you've seen recently, this was painted on location and that's what the location looked like. It's just the way it was. Spring in South Texas can sometimes be that way. Just too good to be true.

I'm going to put it in the gallery soon as I think this is the time of year someone would appreciate it. I hope you enjoy it.

Jay

Dry Wash

And here's one more of the resurrected landscapes I had stored away. I really like this one. It was very basic when I pulled it out of the bin and I have made only a few changes to make it more finished. I particularly like the edges which reveal the underpainting along the ridge of the hill. I think it gives the distance some vibrancy.

Still waiting to photo the two workshop pieces.

A reminder to all of you on the email list: if you are tired of hearing from me with the blog, feel free to ask to be removed. It will not hurt my feelings and I can always add other names.

We are again awaiting rain. It is such a big deal here!
Jay

East Texas Spring

Dear Folks,

I told you I had a backlog of stuff to get on this blog. Here's another one. This is another 8"x10" oil on board. It was done several years ago at the Botanical Center in San Antonio. It is a little cabin brought in and planted around to represent East Texas. And it does that beautifully. This may be the only place we are likely to see wildflowers this year. They plant and water this so the field is very representative of what you see in that part of the country.

It needed very little to finish it off--a little sharpening of the roof of the building--a little emphasis on some of the field flowers--and there you are.

Jay

Spanish Dagger in Bloom

Dear Friends,

Again it has been a while since I posted anything on the blog. I've been very busy trying to get things organized so I can go get some surgery done this Friday and spend the next couple of weeks recouperating. Not to worry. It's nothing dire, but it will make me sore and grumpy for a few days so I wanted to get this one last post in before I head for anaesthesia.

This is another plein air painting of the Spanish Dagger in front of my house. It's actually an older painting than the other one I already showed you. It demonstrates again the color really involved in a "white" subject. I do like the glow of the afternoon sun on this huge blossom.

My friend and mentor, Susan , has pointed out that I am not doing a good job of photogaphing my work and freqently these posts are a bit out of focus. I am trying to remedy this with rephotoing some of the work and fixing the images already on the blog, but trying is as far as it's gotten. I am also redoing the photos of the new works I want to post as her remarks were very correct and I need to pay more attention to the presentation of my work. So, hopefully, when I get back to you after the surgery, I will have better pictures of the dog and cat and horse paintings I am currently doing. I am excited to show them to you.

I will look forward to returning to the blog very soon and I hope you will stay tuned!
Jay

Winter Along the Blanco River

Dear All,

I am sorry again to have let things go for so long on the blog. I haven't forgotten you all and I hope you didn't think I've given this up. Oh no. Not at all. I've just been busy.

This little plein air piece was done in Wimberly in the Texas Hill Country. The bare trees along the hillside didn't offer much color to work with. Shades of gray are ok if you feel like being subtle, but I opted to use the fact that there was good color in the water. It really was quite intense. This is because the day was overcast and in that situation while one does not have good sun for lively shadows, color often becomes stronger. I've had folks who have spent much time up there tell me they think this looks just like that area in winter. Well, I hope so!

See the little house up on the hill? I've often wondered what it would be like to live in such a nice place with such a great view. I noticed it sat well above the flood level for the river. Anyone who has ever witnessed the amazing flooding with a little hard rain in the Texas Hill Country will know why that house was set so far above the river.

Hope you like this.
Jay

South Texas in the Spring

Hi again y'all!

Sorry to have been so slow to repost on the blog lately. I've been getting stuff ready for the big River Art Show in downtown San Antonio this weekend, Oct. 4 and 5. If you are in the area, my booth will be inside the La Villita Assembly Hall in the air-conditioning. You should drop by.

This piece will be there on display. For Sale. Available cheap. Why? Because, good as it is, it is done on canvas board. Oh. Why does that make it cheaper? Because it makes it non-archival. Will it melt away? Only if you soak the backing in your bathtub. Is there anything you can do to protect it? Yes, you can gesso the back of it and keep it dry. It will last for years and years and years. And years. It's 9x12, for a change, and framed nicely in a gold plein air frame.

I did this of my neighbor's vacant land in the late spring when the yellow flowers have taken over from the bluebonnets. They are almost as rampant and make for some pretty bright landscapes. I like the contrast with the bluey cedar (juniper) trees.

I think it has a slightly (very slightly) Van Goghish look to it. You may disagree. You can feel free to say so!

See you at the show?

Jay

Bridle Path

This painting was done on location at a friends ranch a little south of San Antonio several years ago. She ran horse trials on her place and had made wonderful trails through the brush by clearing and mowing and a little bit of bull dozing. I rode there many times and found it to be a great riding venue. One day I went out to her place and parked my truck along this favorite trail and painted it.

The painting later won a Grumbacher Medal and I have always counted it among my favorite pieces. It remains with me. A keeper.

Again, an oil on 8"x10" gessoed board. I know you get tired of me telling you that, but it's what I usually paint on.

Hope everyone is getting over the hurricane faster than Galveston and Houston are. But it sounds like some places in Ohio got it pretty bad. My good wishes go out to you.
Jay

Spanish Dagger

Dear Folks,

This time we go back to Texas landscapes. This one was done in my very own front yard. These Spanish Dagger--a type of yucca to those of you not familiar with Texas--were already here when we built our house on what had been a cow pasture. It was just a wild native. We built a little rock garden around it and have given it minimal water so it looks a bit hard scrabble most of the time. But come spring, the old yucca puts out these spectacular large multiple blooms which are most impressive.

This piece was done plein air, meaning I sat on a chair outside in the sunshine and painted it the way you see it. That's the horse pasture behind it. See?

I like this one very much and have opted to keep it rather than offer it for sale. I like the red underpainting. Remember my discussion about bright colors as underpainting in those coastal pieces? Well, here we have it in a more desert type environment. And it works nicely as a counterpoint to the muted greens of the various plants.

I have to tell you about my friend Anne, who visited us from upstate New York a few years ago. She was wearing white pants when she got too interested in the various native plants in this grouping and walked right into one of the pointed ends of the Spanish Dagger. She got a very good lesson on why these plants are called that. The blood on that white pair of pants was quite stunning. I think she still remembers that incident. So, these things are fun to look at, but don't get too close!

Jay

Christmas on the Riverwalk

Readers,

Here we have something very different for me. This is the San Antonio Riverwalk during the holidays. I can never remember if it's actually Thanksgiving day or the day after, there is a big ceremony to light the lights along the famous Riverwalk. All the huge cypress trees are completely festooned with bright Christmas lights and it just makes for a fairyland of color.

Of course this brings out scads of people, and the boat ride people and sidewalk vendors and stores and restaurants gear up for that. Lots of activity. This was done from a photo my brother, the ace photographer, took last year. I was a little dubious about it as it is so far off my usual path. But the further I got into it, the more fun it became.

There were lots of challenges to it, some of which I did better than others. The lights themselves had to be depicted with straight color from the tubes, and then there was the light reflected on the water and then the light reflected on more absorbant surfaces like the trees and the boat parts and the umbrellas. I took liberties with some of the lighting just to give the piece a more painterly feel. Note the halos around the Christmas lights.

I have no idea what I'll do with this painting. It's little again, 8"x10" on board, but I am wondering if there might be a place for it during the holidays. Maybe there will be a contest?

Just wanted to show you something different from all the recent animals.

Jay

Gentle Readers,



This rather fanciful image is of a horse I had been commissioned to portrait. After the portrait was done, I was intrigued with the wild abandon of his cavorting, and decided to try to capture that. It's a fairly large piece, done on canvas and was selected to be in a show at the airport where it was seen by thousands of people walking by. One of those people happened to be a friend of mine who was taken with it and eventually purchased it for her home. This tickled me on two fronts. One, artists always like to know that their work is appreciated. Second, I get to see it!



Today I am photographing. Maybe tomorrow I'll get some of those on the blog. Stay tuned.

Jay

A few animals

Well, I promised animals, but I didn't get any of the dog, cat, and horse portraits on the computer yet. I thought they were there but they are not. Must have been on my old computer.

Anyway, these two pieces were done in the last couple of years. The gulls are California seagulls who were sitting on a dock at a shipyard in Monterrey. I loved the sun on them.

The cows were part of a group who were watching my friend Peggy and me as we painted landscapes plein air on a ranch north of here. The entire herd came to see what we were doing. That included a very large bull. It made us a little nervous to have these large beasts looking over our shoulders, so we shooed them through a gate to the other side of a fence. They seemed content to go but this cow and a few of her friends kept watching us. The calves got tired of the whole thing and lay down to take a nap. I could not resist the photo. The painting is entitled " The Babysitter", which is something I learned that cows do. I had not known that before this experience.

Anyway, since the calves were not laying in a good composition for me ( animals are so uncooperative) I took liberties with the composition and moved them around some. I thought it came out rather well. Well, at least it made me laugh every time I looked at it. Several other people laughed too, and sure enough, someone was so amused, he bought it for his new house in the hill country. I have a couple other paintings of cows from this same day so now I'll have to get those on this blog.

I am delighted to have received many many positive responses to my email and plea for your attention yesterday. One even came from folks in Florida I don't know! My aunt Jacqui referred them to the site. Welcome to Jay Lauver's Art Blog everyone! I hope you'll put the http address on your favorites list so it's easy to find me.

Plainly the next project for me is to get more paintings photographed. And a better job of cropping them so you don't see the frames. I'm working on it.

Jay

The Window in the Chisos

Hi Everyone,

I am trying to get more paintings on the blog as soon as I can. I still have to create a file of just the paintings, which are numerous, but in the meantime I thought I would add this piece from a trip to Big Bend two years ago. Again this was done plein air, which means out in the open, on location. Two of my art friends, Peggy Thompson and Irena Taylor, and I went out to the national park for a few days of intense painting. We stayed in the Basin at the Lodge, an incredibly beautiful place, and did day trips around the park to paint. It certainly was not hard to find painting locales. Everywhere one turned was a different gasp-worthy view.

My next post, hopefully, will have some of the animal paintings I have done. Dogs, cats and horses. Did you know that I have two covers on the Chronicle of the Horse magazine? Hmm. It's been a while. I should submit something new one of these days.

Happy painting!

Jay

The Prize Winner

This is the painting I described in my first post on this new blog. Sorry. I'm still learning how to work this thing.

This painting was done on location on Evans Rd. north of San Antonio along the Cibolo Creek. The old house is still lived in, but remains very much the way it was when it was built. An old family cemetary exists not far from the house but I don't know if the residents are related to the cemetary family. The painting is small, 8"x10", is framed in a wide gold "plein air" frame and is available for $500. Buyer pays shipping. I have another version of the same house, painted the same day, but with a slightly different composition, which is also available.

As I become more accomplished with the blog, I will publish a great number of my paintings so that they can be viewed as a body. Please look for that when I get it done. If you have comments or questions, please do respond as I am interested in what you have to say about the piece. Besides, I'd just like to know if anyone is looking at the blog.

Thanks!
Jay