designs from Everglades National Park

Everglades National Park covers over 1.5 million acres! Only some of it is accessible by car. We took an airboat tour (remember "Gentle Ben" and "Flipper"?) of some of the mangrove and cypress groves and it was spectacular! Except for the part where the guide warned us of snakes in the trees. Yikes!

On land, I was especially intrigued with the pine groves and their unique ecosystems. From where we camped, I could see a nice group of trees and I studied them for a long time. Studying became sketching. Sketching became designing. Designing became abstraction.

Some of the trees were bent from the devastating 2005 Hurricane Katrina. Of course, many snapped and broke off, but some bent and stayed bent. I appreciated how their trunks created diagonal changes in the mostly vertical portion of the view.

I keep think of Hofmann's admonishment to let the landscape become the launching point for a painting design. As I look at these sketches today, I have more ideas about what to do with those shapes to move them further into abstraction.

On my morning walk around the lake, I was mindful of the ranger's warning about snakes in the ankle-high grass. I definitely didn't want to meet one of those giant Burmese Pythons everyone is worried about in Florida.

And, I was sure to walk in the morning, because, as another friend warned, "At night, there's just alligators and alligator food in the lake." 

Life is good!

inspired by Hofmann!

sketchbook, designs inspired by Hofmann

Hofmann, Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX

Hofmann, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA

I've been enjoying reading more about the life of Hans Hofmann in Cynthia Goodman's biography. Plus, in my travels, I have seen some of Hofmann's paintings in person. Brilliant color. Color fields. A sense of push/pull.

One afternoon, as I sketched the views outside the window, I thought of what I have read and seen of Hofmann's work. It changed how I drew, the colors I chose, and how I arranged the shapes.

Do you like Hans Hofmann?

More from the Crocker Art Museum

Untitled, Hans Hofmann

Flowers, Richard Diebenkorn

Green Lampshade, Elmer Nelson Bischoff

Besides Wayne Thiebaud, these three artists were also on my "must see" list for my trip to the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, CA. 

Hans Hofmann, legendary Abstract Expressionist, and teacher to Wolf Kahn, Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler (recently deceased!), and Frank Stella, among many others. Some of my current art teachers are students of students of Hofmann and it's little wonder that I wanted to see his color fields and the sense of push/pull in his original artwork. 

Richard Diebenkorn's lush application of paint and color sensibility always appeals to me. He takes ordinary objects and makes them extraordinary! 

Finally, Elmer Nelson Bischoff.  His work, and that of the other Bay Area Figure Movement artists, interests me very much. I have a lot to learn from that group of fine artists. Though this example of Bischoff's painting style is not figurative, I spent a lot of enjoyable time studying the way he assembled the elements of this composition and how he created that delicate but sure sense of light inside, coming from the lamp, and light outside.

I love road trips. Here are some drawings from my sketchbook as we drove south out of Oregon into northern California. The beautiful road, and all that it suggests, intrigues me. There might just be a series in this for me!