I do not know how long I have followed the Painter's Keys, a bi-weekly letter from Robert Genn of Canada but I do know that I look forward to each news letter as it drops into my inbox. He is a facile writer seeming to always have something pertinent to say to us. I have put a link to his page here on my blog. Click over and see if you like him as well.
His home page is full of all kinds of information including quotes about art that can come in handy for a none writer like me. For example:

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the ordinary. (Christina Baldwin)

Seeing the miraculous in the ordinary truly is what I feel every day and what I try to put into my paintings. 

My life has been really busy lately and this blog suffered my neglect. With a little perseverance  I will be posting a bit more often. If just for my own record of my work. 

This is one of my plein airs from a workshop that I took in Scottsdale AZ in April with Marc Hanson. That workshop lead to lots of work for me in my studio. Palm trees are way outside of my comfort zone. 

Plein Air Artist Margie Larson featured in the August Mankato Magazine

My brother scanned the article about me that was published in the Mankato Magazine. The magazine likes to  to showcase local artists and their work. Mankato has lots of talented people living in the area.

My fifteen minutes of fame. ;-D

Mankato Magazine Article

I was interviewed for an article in the local magazine a couple of months ago. The magazine likes to have articles about local artists. I was lucky enough to be chosen from a long list of artists in the area.  I concentrated on talking about plein air painting and that I am working toward a show at the Blue Earth County Historical Society in January. My friend Gerry and I proposed a show of local scenes painted plein air. We are working on paintings for that show this summer. I can't use their photos but this is the painting I was working on when I was interviewed. We were painting at Indian Lake....before the mosquitoes made working out doors so much fun.

The grasses were tall and swaying in the wind. It was fun catching them and now remembering the great day it was out there. Hope you can see the article in the August Mankato Magazine. Available at Cubs and HyVee and with your newspaper.

Started as Plein Air--finished in studio

I have a thing about water and falls. I like the changeability of water in it's many moods and settings. So I went to Minneopa Falls again a couple of weeks ago. With my grandson and niece. They went hiking and I set up to paint. In no time they were back and ready to be creative too. Hafsa, my niece, found a dangerous place on the wrong side of the fence to paint the falls. That is a drop off right at her feet to the bottom of the fall's gorge. My set up in the back ground.

Grandson, Avery, decided to do a life drawing of his grandpa. Here he is working hard to get the likeness just right.

 Grandpa was happy to pose for a while. I think he took a nap.

I started this painting of the falls on site but was using my new alkyd paints that dry very quickly .... too quickly for a hot day. I was getting quite frustrated and decided to bring it home blocked in. I took it to the studio today to finish it in between working on my commission. Using the alkyds in the studio worked much better. In the sun and heat the day I was at the water falls, the paints dried quickly and they were like working with glue. In studio they work just fine. You can still tell that they dry faster. I think I kept it fresh and not too over done. That is the problem with bringing a painting home to finish from a photo. I have the photo but did not use it except to check the bridge. And to keep the falls looking right. This has been a banner year for the falls. We have had lots of snow and rain this year and the falls have been full all summer long. Some years there is hardly any water falling.

The photo is a bit bluer than real life. Used ultramarine blue to make the grays and my camera always emphasizes  the blue in photos. Just think gray where there are blue shadows.

New Plein Air paintings

Been trying to work on plein airs. Life gets in the way though. We had lots of company last week, grand kids and niece. Then we went camping up north for a hot weekend of biking on new trials at Cayuna State Park. Lots of fun and lots of sweating in the hot humid summer weather.

Here are some plein airs that I completed before the weather turned on us.

On the River, garden at a friend's house on the Blue Earth River. As always oil on board, 11x14

This is the Blue Earth river from a campground. We were in shade and managed to keep the bugs away. Later I added a little kayak to the sweet spot to give the painting a bit of interest. (not shown)  The Blue Earth River is in a bit of a gorge and has lots of water falls along the way. Most of which are not accessible except by the river. My painting buddy, Gerry and I, would really like to get to some of the waterfalls for paintings......someday.

Worked at a local park called Indian Lake. Breezy day.

Indian Lake again, looking the other way. It was a beautiful day.

With luck the weather will change and we will be able to get out again. Heat and humidity are not conductive to good paintings. 

One of those totally beautiful days

Our weather has been pretty iffy this spring. On again and off again hot cold rainy, windy, yuck. But Yesterday was a day in paradise. Warm sun, slight breeze, bird song and sound of rushing water in the back ground. Sorry E. much better day than you had. We set up at a friends home on the Blue Earth River. I tried a long view of the river with a boat on the water. It just wasn't making it. Wiped it off and started over with a more intimate scene of our friends garden.
Peonies are in full bloom right now. I am not happy with the water of the river in the back ground. It is that strange cocoa with green reflections. The river is high with run off from a storm of 3 inches. And it was hard to keep it looking consistent with the trees in the way.

 

I deliberately left the lower corner undone. there were more rocks lining the garden and I felt that more would be redundant. There was also a small tree in the back ground that I painted out after I came home it just confused the composition. I am much happier with it now. Came close to wiping it out too. I am going to blame the full moon messing with me.

Sorry for the poor photo. This is way bluer on my screen than in real life. There is more life in the dark background than shows too. Cameras and computer screens just do not do paintings any favors.

Art Fair Weekend

All those frames we were making were for the first annual Arts By the River. Art and music and food in the new Riverfront Park in Mankato.  We framed 14 plein air paintings. Here they are all lined up and ready to be packed up for the show.

And here they are at the show set up and ready to find new homes. I brought them all back to my studio. Maybe next time.  I shared the table with my painting buddy, Gerry. She didn't sell either but did make some contacts for commissions.

It was very nice on Saturday and had lots of people who attended the show. We did see some people buying art. There were lots of lookers just no buyers at our table. Sunday was another matter, cold, windy and spitting rain all afternoon long. Guess when it cleared and got nice--just before we were ready to pack up for the weekend.  Sighhhh............

How many blogs begin with "It has been a while"? Well, here we go again. I know that I have been busy and working hard and now have gotten outside to paint plein air but where the time went since March I cannot recall at all. Just lots of stuff happening.


I am in a small art fair in Mankato at the new River Front Park this coming weekend and needed to make my little plein airs look good....well, maybe better. Buying frames for all my paintings was going to be way too expensive so my in-house handy man has been building frames for me the last two days. He has both the talent and good tools to make framing look easy. I remember back in my school days trying to make frames using a simple miter box with a flat saw. Really ugly frames were the result.

Our local Menards (hardware box store) carries oak trim for the frames. I wanted to have a floating shadow box style frame for the paintings. We bought corner braces that really work well (2 for $8) at the same store. They work with a spring and slide right into the corners correcting alignment as they settle into the corners. Dan really likes the way they work.

A while ago, Larry Sieler on Wet Canvas, Plein Air forum, showed us the strap brace that he used to make his frames. We found a similar one at Menards for $24. Both braces work a bit differently but having both sty

Two Frames Drying at the same time. 

Fourteen Frames made and finished and paintings mounted in two days.

Here are all the frames hung in a line, painted with Krylon spray paint (satin black) or stained. We like the stained frames for the spring plein airs which are lighter in value than the ones that will go in the black frames. Most of the frames are 8x10. We could get two frames out of one length of trim board. We figure the 8x10 frames cost about $4 without labor. Not bad since these frames turned out really professional looking.

Here is a view of how the paintings float in the frames. Now all we have to do is sell a few at the art fair this weekend. 

Time flies by...........

Where time goes is a hard one to figure out. It sure flies by without us looking. Gerry and I have been out painting at least once a week. The hot weather has kept us in doors for much of the lost time. We did get out last week and painted in a friend's back yard. We always look for shade to stand in and keep our painting and pallets in the same light. Here is the result of that painting session. The upper left hand corner of all places gave me a bit of a composition dilemma. I painted the space originally with the roof of the house that had a dark brown trim board on it. After looking at the painting at home. I decided to paint the trim board and roof out. It took too much attention from the center of interest. Then that blank space did the same thing! So I decided to put the trim board back in the painting but lighter in tone. Now that space with the roof and the windows makes sense and I have decided to be happy with the finished painting. All that fussing and I really just wanted to paint the tree and the flowers under it.

Monday we had a chance to get back to the little cemetery so Gerry could work on a panorama. I decided to do the willow clump from a couple of weeks ago again but this time so the tree did not take up the whole painting. It ended up being a very high key painting. The day was quite humid and so we get the blue tree line in the back ground. I over emphasized the humidity to get away from an all green painting. This is a little bluer and darker green than real life.
Today I went out to 7 mile creek park and set up on one of the bridges over the creek. Wow, was it nice in the park today. The stream burbling below me, birds singing and children playing--sweet! Talk about green --- I truly need to find a new subject right now. Either that or take up nocturnals so I can paint something with the other colors on my palette. The painting needs quite a bit of touch up before I show you it. Either that or I will gesso the whole thing and start again. Until later.

Plein Air Again

I finally got some photos of my work outdoors. With luck this hot and humid weather will break tonight and my painting partner Gerry and I will get out again. This time I think we are going to try a water fall and break away from all the green.
Gerry found this sweet little hide away for us. It is a tiny rural cemetery on a little knoll over looking an elk farm, a nice meadow and lots of corn and bean fields. We could stand in the shade to paint and could find a painting with every turn of our heads. We did not try to paint the elk. But my, they are really big with huge racks on their heads. Hope the farmer makes a good living with them.

Number 1--This is a little 8x10 in oil on canvas. It is part of the pasture for the elk. They were in the shade but so far away that they didn't really show. Good excuse not to paint them -- right? The fence is at least 12 feet tall. So you can see that the trees were quite far away from me.

Number 2 -- This one is 10 x 14 oil on board. This day I concentrated on this willow clump. There was an elk in the shade again but not in the painting. Gerry and I are working on green variations. There are plenty to work with this summer. Everything is really lush from all the rain we have had. At least we get some variation in the clouds.  I think the saving grace in this painting is the little gravel road in the back ground. It breaks up the green in the foreground from the back ground fields and  trees.

Number 3 -- 11x14 oil on canvas.  I had an eye on this cross road. It was just down the way from our little cemetery. I had to stand almost in the road to get a good composition. It took about a half hour to set up my umbrella to give my canvas and palette some shade.  I liked the way the corn contrasted with the beans and the way the gravel road complemented the greens. Gerry said I had to add the stop sign. Dan says I need to put STOP on it. Not going to happen!  I did like the way the far road turned out with it's little dips.

While I was painting away my left brain kicked in and said " I like the horizon line in the middle and I love the way the poles are both leaning exactly the same. I am so good. I even fooled the right brain into thinking she got the horizon above the middle. The poles were so much fun to fool her with!"  

The right brain did touch ups at home to straighten one of the telephone poles and raise the horizon line. For a bit of wild life I put some birds on the line.

More paintings later--Blessings to all.