SPECIAL FEATURE

Expanded Digital Edition Content

Church on Smith Island, Julie Riker, 2019, oil, 8 x 8 in., available from Les Poissons Gallery, Chestertown, MD, plein air

Spruce Creek Valley Vista, Jeanne McKinney, 2014, pastel, 18 x 24 in., private collection, plein air The Path Seldom Taken, Marti Walker, 2014, pastel, 9 x 12 in., private collection, plein air

The Long Road, Brenda Pinnick, 2021, oil, 30 x 40 in., available from artist, studio from plein air study

Expanded Digital Edition Content

April Showers, Sheryl Knight, 2021, oil, 18 x 24 in., available from Solvang Antique Art Gallery, studio from plein air study

Around the Corner

David Boyd Jr. 2016, oil, 12 x 12 in. Private collection Plein air

ROBIN PURCELL

MAKING SENSE OF A RIOT OF COLOR

Even for an artist known for glorious color, the Carlsbad Flower Fields proved a challenge. Learn how she tackled this tricky subject in a series of increasingly abstracted watercolors.

——— BY KELLY KANE ———

For a few weeks each spring, Mother Nature transforms the rolling hills of California’s North San Diego County into one of the most spectacular and coordinated displays of natural color and beauty anywhere in the world. With nearly 50 acres of Giant Tecolote ranunculus blooms, the Flower Fields at Carlsbad Ranch have helped usher in the season for more than 60 years. Hoping to capture the fleeting display in watercolor, California painter Robin Purcell had been stymied by gray skies three years in a row. Early this April, however, Santa Ana winds made the conditions perfect for her preferred way of working — low humidity and strong sunlight that would dry her shapes quickly. With the fields in full bloom, the artist completed three paintings in one week. “The main problem this subject presented was how to anchor the scene in reality and not have it dissolve into a gaudy display,” says Purcell. The tan furrows of the fields helped. So did the dotted lines of greenery, which she found gave the fields dimension. “They reminded me of stitches in a quilt,” she says. The flowers she likened to “ribbons of color across a shallow slope.” In quiet contrast to the blooms’ bright colors, she used soft cool and neutral colors for the hills and fog in the background.

Each piece in the series featured a different aspect of the fields, and they grew increasingly abstract as the week progressed. What started as an attempt to make the compositions more dynamic by painting the lines of blooms at a slight diagonal rather than in straight horizontal rows turned into an opportunity to explore an idea that had been born years before. “I went to an exhibition of Carmen Herrera’s work at the Whitney several years ago, and it stayed with me,” says Purcell. “Having seen the circles, flags, targets, and squares of her male contemporaries, I was taken by her explorations of what one shape and two colors could do. Looking for a way to convey the immense length of the flower fields, I was reminded of Herrera’s elongated triangles. In Color Fields, the last in the series, I stretched the painting format to 8 x 16 inches (a 1:2 ratio). The more I stretched the shapes, the more I got the feeling of depth I was looking for. It had taken years, but I finally found a way to use Herrera’s ideas successfully in a landscape painting. I may try a 1:2 1/2, 1:3, or even a 1:4 format in the future.”

ROBIN PURCELL describes how she developed her unique style of painting this way: “I must have been permanently warped by doing paint by numbers as a child. Then I fell hard for the paintings of the early California Impressionists, particularly Granville Redmond and William Wendt, whose work helped me to see the landscape as shapes. In my own paintings, I simplify what I see and organize it into shimmering patches of color. Working outdoors with watercolor makes it much easier for me to control the hard edges that I need for this approach.”

robinpurcellpaints.blogspot.com

A STUDY IN PERSISTENCE

Part of a community of artists pushing the boundaries of painting and sculpture in Paris in the 1940s, Havana-born Carmen Herrera exhibited her work alongside that of Piet Mondrian and seemed destined for greatness. But while her male counterparts — Barnett Newman, Ellsworth Kelly, and Frank Stella — saw success with similar work, Herrera’s paintings of brightly colored geometric shapes went largely unnoticed for most of her career. She didn’t make her first painting sale until age 89.

Then, at 101, Herrera finally got her due, when the Whitney Museum in New York staged “Lines of Sight,” an acclaimed exhibition of the artist’s works from 1948 to 1978. Five years later, she is still going strong, living and working in New York City, which she’s called home since the mid-50s. Just last year, she created a design for a 54-foot-wide mural titled Uno Dos Tres, a variation on the painting Diagonal, which she made in 1987 and consisted of concentric squares in alternating black and white lines. The mural went on view in Harlem at the Manhattan East School for Arts and Academics, whose students helped complete the project. Asked by ARTnews in 2015 where she gets ideas for her work, the artist said, “I have to have it in my head. I do a drawing, and then I figure it out. Once you think about it, it’s very easy.”

Carmen Herrera’s work on display at the Whitney Museum in New York (photo by Robin Purcell)

(TOP) Carlsbad Flower Fields, 2021, watercolor, 8 x 8 in., available from artist, plein air • (ABOVE) Color Fields, 2021, watercolor, 8 x 16 in., available from artist, plein air • (LEFT) The Flower Fields, 2021, watercolor, 9 x 12 in., private collection, plein air

A PENCHANT FOR PASTEL

Forget what you think you know about the medium. Marcia Holmes, Clive Tyler, Karen Margulis, and Lana Ballot showcase the diversity possible using pastel en plein air.

——— BY KELLY KANE ———

MARCIA HOLMES

An Intuitive Approach

Pastel is such an easy “go to” medium for me. By layering color, I can achieve a graceful, subtle scene or an energetic expression of motion, focusing on atmospheric qualities or an emotional memory of a particular time and place. Pastel fits with my loose style. Because there’s no mixing of paint, pastel can be applied spontaneously. Even in the waning hours of light in France in the summertime, I can get in a quick sketch, grabbing the essence of what’s before me.

Pastel is particularly well-suited to painting water lilies — one of my favorite subjects, as I can edit intuitively, skipping mentally across the water, reacting to the color of water reflections that speak the loudest, stroking the action of wind or rain, and following my instinct to portray motion throughout the entire painting.

I want viewers of my work to experience a sense of peace as well as excitement, to feel that they are standing in my shoes, emotionally connecting and identifying with nature. My paintings have always had an abstract quality, constructed through careful layering of color. I begin with a mixed-media underpainting using some combination of watercolor, gouache, ink, or thinned oil with pastel. Since I learned about walnut ink, I almost always use it as part of the initial lay-in of my abstract concept or plein air experience. The ink provides a loose base with soft, fluid edges. With time, experience, and confidence, I now paint more intuitively, with no preconceived notion of the outcome.

Giverny in the Rain

2017, pastel, 12 x 12 in. Private collection Plein air

Giverny Water Lilies in Blue II

2017, pastel, 12 x 12 in. Private collection Plein air