OVAC Art Studio Tour - Kick Off Party & What I Learned

So last night I had the opportunity to head over to Frame Maker Gallery for the Kick-Off Party for the OVAC Art Studio Tour. WOW! Talk about diverse and beautiful artwork from a fantastic group of area artists.

I was so thrilled to have the privilege to meet and visit with a few of the featured artists like painters Mary Russell, Lynn Clark, Kristal Tomshany and Mosaic artist Cindy Swanson. The caliber of work presented was superb and diverse.

While I had intended to go on some of the studio tours today, we woke up to a freak snow storm this late in the season! I'm sure that others will be braver than I and not miss out on the rare opportunity to visit the working studios.

However, I made sure to talk at length with a few of the artists and especially enjoyed visiting with Mary Russell regarding painting masses vs. lines. She explained that as soon as one starts a painting with lines, there's an immediate disconnect between the elements. However, when painting masses with all soft edges, saving hard edges to the very last, it creates a unity and is extremely liberating to the artist. What she said made me think of writing a speech. When one works from an outline - from thoughts, rather than a manuscript, the speech, when given is more natural and interesting to listen to. And the speaker speaks much more freely. Perhaps it's the same concept when painting masses instead of line-based details.

So, I promised Mary that I was going to go home and right away practice painting masses. This morning I got out some black card stock, a few soft pastels, a couple of landscape photos and set about on this mission. I gave myself just 2.5 x 3.5" of territory for each sketch/study. One is a fairly complex series of back-lit trees one late afternoon in Florida. The other is a section of downtown Tulsa - early morning. I wished that I had had some other darker/neutral colors to work with, but these were a good exercise. Now the goal is to keep practicing this and translate this method to larger paintings.

So, thank you Mary and all the other artists for taking the time to graciously answer my questions!