summer landscapes

Over the winter, I tried to make an effort to love the winter landscape.  It's very difficult, mostly since you would most likely be happy observing it from inside a house or a car and rarely out in it.  I tried to pay attention--especially during the winter hates--the rich greens of non-deciduous trees and bushes.  The oatmeal colored whisps of wintering pampass and other grasses.  The white snow, the ground and it's browns and grays. The lake, at turns gray and startling blue depending on the day and the angle of sun.  It's a hard sell, so no wonder that I have been pleasantly lilting about in spring and summer's greenery (though for a week in April, I was convinced the pollen was trying to kill me.) 

I take way too many pictures of lakes and gazing up into the trees that sometimes make their way onto the instagram. I also like taking photos of Illinois flat landscapes in the summer, and when possible, Wisconsin's slow start of low hills as you head north into more wooded areas. Some day, I will collect then together and make a zine or book out of them.  Mostly, they look very much the same, just the colors vary.  A barn or some trees here and there.  The stretch of I-90 between Chicago and Rockford gets a lot of attention in the photos, especially when I was going back and forth a lot the year my mother was sick. 

Years  ago, I did my first real efforts at abstract watercolors, what eventually became ghost landscapes:  a travelogue and their strange little story of a town no on ever gets to leave, despite trains that arrive and leave on schedule.  My favorite of these is one that wound up on the cover of that project and looks like a haunted forest, though many are just flat landscapes. Somewhere in my studio mess, is a set of square lakescape canvases.  Other things I've painted just for me--including a couple of moody seascapes for my kitchen in browns and grays. Other small landscapes I've framed around my apartment. I tend toward landscapes and botanicals in general when I turn to paints or ink, mostly becuase they feel more familiar to me with more organic lines and patterning. Since I am a messy painter, the abstractness to me is part of the charm. I usually just start throwing paint on the paper (which I far prefer to canvas) and see what happens. Which of course, is not unlike how I write..lol.. 

Yesterday, I had a slow Sunday start and pulled out some paints and water and tricked myself into creating a few postcards for my Patreon and Books & Objects subscribers.  I love the colors I get the further I go and the more things start to mix unintentionally or intentionally. I'm pretty happy with this little set and you can see the results here.