Painting in a Snow Storm

Canada, mid-winter, one never knows what sort of weather is going to arise. There was a snow storm yesterday morning but by the evening, rain had set-in and everything was mush.

Patrick had posted a call for artists to come and paint outside on the bridge at the top of Rideau Street in Ottawa, beside our esteemed Chateau Laurier Hotel. Earlier in the week, three people had come and participated in a cold weather marathon and it was good.

Today, not only was it frigid but it was very windy and there was blowing snow that froze, not only  eyelashes and fingers, it froze the relatively unfreezable oil paint. You will understand when you see the video and Patrick says that he was spreading paint as if it were cream cheese.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHw0WgUuB4s&feature=youtu.be

Bare hands, only, for painting.

A palette of frozen paint.

Kudos to Patrick and Ameika who proved their artist mettle by enduring.

This is the second au plein "freezing" air this winter. Ottawa artists participated in several of these on Laurier St. at Bank St. last winter with surprising results in terms of attendance, materials used and startling results.

Here are some more photos from today.

Let's Paint Outside on Sunday, Jan. 20/13

So much fun and frolic mid-week painting outside in Ottawa in the middle of winter, Patrick John Mills has called for another outside painting event this coming Sunday, January 20/13. 10:00 am.

Join us on the bridge by the Chateau Laurier Hotel at the top of Rideau Street. Look for the paint splatters!


http://www.facebook.com/events/428658550541265/

Painting Outside in January in Ottawa

Earlier this week, Patrick John Mills, Patrick S. Greene and several other intrepid artists hiked their easels, canvases and paints to the bridge across from the Chateau Laurier, one of Ottawa's landmark hotels, and they, well, they painted.

Check out this video shot and narrated by Patrick John Mills.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdGNRgUOC3w

2013 and We're Ready!

HAPPY NEW YEAR,  EVERYONE!

AND ALL THE BEST IN 2013.

Willem de Kooning, Gerhard Richter, Mark Rothko, and Sean Scully. - inspiring Heart Beat painting



 

Photo taken inside Studio. Dec 2012

 



Heat Beat. oil on canvas. 48 x 72 inches. Summer - Winter 2012. Price: $3800

 

Patrick John Mills

 



Photo inside artists studio - Dec 2012.

Heat Beat. oil on canvas. 48 x 72 inches. Summer - Winter 2012. Price: $3800.

 

I worked on this painting for 5 - 6 months. It has many layers of paint. It is very textured. The painting transformed, changed, developed many times over the months. I considered calling the painting: Transformation, Red, Improvisation, Soul, Inner Song, Nature is Inside the Soul. But in the end the title: Heat Beat. Not Heart Beats. But Heart Beat. A single moment. Life is Moments. Or in this case a moment. A time when life needs to stop. Take time out to contemplate.

While working in the studio I would keep talking to the canvas. Paint. Moving paint over the canvas. Trying to focus. Trying to connect to the energy inside my mind and soul. Adding paint. Removing paint.

The color RED. Why this color? What does Red mean to me. After all a painting is paint. And as an artist / painter I have a relationship with each color. RED represents passion, fire, burning energy, rage, heat in the heart, fire in the veins, murder, death, birth, intense love and passion.

I was thinking about landscape. I was thinking about Willem de Kooning and his landscape paintings.

This painting Heart Beat was inspired by many other artists: Willem de Kooning, Gerhard Richter, Mark Rothko, and Sean Scully.

I was thinking about Willem de Kooning landscape paintings.

Gerhard Richter (born 9 February 1932) is a German visual artist. Richter has simultaneously produced abstract and photorealistic painted works, as well as photographs and glass pieces, thus following the examples of Picasso and Jean Arp in undermining the concept of the artist’s obligation to maintain a single cohesive style

 

Marcus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz; September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970) was a painter. He is classified as an abstract expressionist, although he himself rejected this label, andRussian-American even resisted classification as an "abstract painter".

 

Willem de Kooning (April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

In the post-World War II era, de Kooning painted in a style that came to be referred to as Abstract expressionism or Action painting, and was part of a group of artists that came to be known as the New York School.

 

Sean Scully was born in Dublin and raised in South London. He studied at Croydon College of Art and Newcastle University. He was a recipient of a graduate fellowship at Harvard in the early 1970s and subsequently settled in New York.[3]

Scully was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1989 and 1993. He has exhibited widely in Europe and the United States, and is represented in the permanent collections of a number of museums and public galleries, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., The Art Institute of Chicago, the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, the National Gallery of Australia, the Tate Gallery, London, the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, and many other private and public collections worldwide. In 2006 Scully donated eight of his paintings to the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin, which opened an extension that year with a room dedicated to Scully's works.[4]