Drawing with wild color

A portrait of Karen Lynn Ingalls • © 2011 Dayana C.

Today I had the pleasure of spending some time with children making art, at the Calistoga Boys and Girls Club, after school.

I brought one of my paintings in to show them, and we talked about using color in ways we like, not necessarily the way we expect things to look. We looked at examples of paintings by the Fauves (who painted like wild beasts! Hence the name, which means "wild beasts" in French), and the German expressionists – portraits with green, yellow, and red faces – and landscapes with pink and blue hills and green skies....

Then the students set down to create something, using wild color inspired by the Fauves. Dayana, in the drawing above, decided to combine a landscape with a wild pink and red sky and a portrait – of me! Green skin, red neck, red hair, yellow bangs, and green ears – I love it! I am honored that she gave it to me.

Winter progress

Snow on Mt. St. Helena, February 2011 • photo © 2011 Karen Lynn Ingalls

Winter arrived (again), after a lovely but untimely interlude of early spring. Snow fell on Mt. St. Helena (above), the hills around Knights Valley (to its left), and up in Lake County, and decided to stay for awhile. I stopped to take this photo across from Graeser Winery. What you can't see is the tree, to the right, that was still partly full of all the blossoms the rain didn't knock down.

New shelves! • photo © 2011 Karen Lynn Ingalls

The studio is coming along well. I've finished this first stage of painting the walls, and two dear friends helped me set up shelves. Ah! The beginnings of a semblance of organization! It feels good.

Now I'm knuckling down to prepare for both a photographing trip to the desert and five (yup - count 'em - five!) shows in March. One will be a solo show – and that will be at the Westin Verasa, Napa, on the Napa River. Another will be with my Napa Valley Open Studios colleagues at A Taste of Yountville, a wonderful food–and–art event in the tiny town that has more top restaurants per square foot than any place in the world. It's going to be a busy week....

Napa Valley Art Workshops website

The first website (of the two I'm working on) is up! And you can find it at www.napavalleyartworkshops.com. This one lists and describes the art workshops I'll be teaching this summer, and includes photographs from previous workshops.

While I'm still in the process of scheduling many of the workshops, dates are set for Create Your Own Wine Labels and Sketching Calistoga. And the Calistoga Visitors Center has made them official events of our town's 125th anniversary year! I need to go back and add the official logo to those pages....

Building infrastructure

Inside the studio, newly painted walls • photo © 2011 Karen Lynn Ingalls

The turning of this year seems, for me, to be about building infrastructure of one kind or another.

The work I'm doing in my studio – painting walls, putting up shelves, reworking and organizing the space - the work I've been doing building websites (they're coming!) for my painting and my teaching, and the demonstration examples I'm making for this summer's workshops are kind of like roads, hospitals, and public works projects. You need them to get things done, to make things work. You depend on them.

Home page of one of the new websites • photo © 2011 Karen Lynn Ingalls

So, at some point the walls will all be painted, the shelves will all be up (it's a work in progress), and the paintings and canvases will be stacked on them neatly. The websites will be up and running, with all the information anyone needs or wants to know about my paintings and my classes and workshops. The sample work will all be done and photographed, and everything will run ever so efficiently....

Am I dreaming?

Okay, at least a bit more efficiently. I hope. I can hardly wait! Now, back to work....

The studio project

Painting in the studio (see the great light from the skylight and window?) • photo © 2010 Nathan Ingalls

I am blessed to be able to use as my studio part of a barn near Calistoga. I have two skylights, two windows, and amazing light; two doors, one with ramp access and the other one a big barn door (great for bringing big paintings in and out).

Insulating with wool in progress

photo © 2010 Karen Lynn Ingalls

Slowly, I've been getting work done on the studio as well as in it. When I was searching for a good (and cheap) way to insulate the walls, another painter suggested sheep's wool, which is sometimes used for insulation in England and Canada. A renewable resource – it's green! And I knew people with sheep and wool and no place to take it, which is how I wound up insulating the barn walls with wool. My landlord also gave me some old foamboard insulation, which sped up the process enormously. I like that this has been a green project – keeping both the wool and the foamboard out of the landfill.

Insulating with wool in progress

(I used the white PVC pole to tamp the wool into place behind the board) • photo © 2010 Karen Lynn Ingalls

All but two sections of wall are insulated now, and most of them are covered by oriented-strand board. Lately, I've been working on filling gaps in the wall with expanding foam and spackle, cutting off the foam and sanding it and the spackle, and priming the walls. I'm working on one side of the studio, and I'm happy to see it all beginning to come together....

Getting a little enthusiastic testing colors

photo © 2011 Karen Lynn Ingalls

The next step is to paint over the primer. This side of the studio will have darker walls. I went a little overboard in my enthusiasm (and confusion) about what direction to go, color-wise. It was fun, though. (Beware those little tester paint pots – they are soooo seductive. And some of the test colors I mixed myself with student-grade acrylics.)

My Mark Rothko wall

photo © 2011 Karen Lynn Ingalls

I thought this wall was looking a bit like Mark Rothko.... (No, I didn't really need to paint the light strip in the middle - I just really, really wanted to turn the wall, for a moment, into an homage to Rothko. The temptation was too great.…)

Zoe, enjoying the view from the studio at twilight

photo © 2010 Karen Lynn Ingalls

I think I've settled on wall colors now (none of the ones you see above). I tested them next to nearly every painting in the studio. We'll see how they work!

Spring 2011 painting classes at the Calistoga Art Center

Karen giving a painting demonstration, in the current Art Center in Calistoga's historic Masonic Building • photo © 2010 Erik Bolijn

The new year has arrived, and it's time for my Acrylic Painting classes to begin again at the Calistoga Art Center. This will be the Art Center's last month in Calistoga's historic Masonic Building, on the main street in town. The light there is spectacular.… Feel like painting objects in light from the windows? Painting the street views? This is your last chance.…

Painters at work in the Spring 2010 Acrylic Painting class

The first four–week session runs from January 12th through the beginning of February. We'll have one four–week session on Wednesdays, and another on Fridays, both from 1:00 to 4:00 in the afternoon.

Then the Art Center moves to its new location, in the Cropp Building, at the Napa Valley Fairgrounds, 1435 North Oak Street, Calistoga. We'll have 3,000 feet of space! With skylights, concrete floors, and a big parking lot! It's going to be a wonderful space for us — I hope you'll join us – or come by and take a look during our Open House coming in March.

The remaining spring sessions will be:

February 9th through March 18th

March 23rd through April 15th

April 27th through May 20th

You can find more information online at www.calistogaartcenter.org.

The arty side of the California State Capitol

California State Capitol building, from the side • © 2010 Karen Lynn Ingalls

Three years ago, Arts Council Napa Valley approached State Senator Pat Wiggins, our representative in Sacramento, and asked her if she would like to choose artwork from the Napa Valley to display in her Sacramento offices. She said yes, and chose two artists — painter Molly Corbett Kruse and me.

Lofty Oak © 2003 Karen Lynn Ingalls

She loved our work! I was honored that she chose one of my paintings, Lofty Oak, as the image for her holiday card the following December. And what originally was intended to be a six-month show lasted three years.…

Last week, Molly and I drove to Sacramento, to pick up our paintings, and had an art-filled day at the Capitol. It was a day to remember!

Molly and Koren on the floor of the Senate Chamber (obviously not in session – the new Senators were just sworn in a few days earlier, and the new governor and lieutenant governor will be sworn in after the new year). Notice the television camera artfully hidden behind the draperies? • © 2010 Karen Lynn Ingalls

Koren Benoit, art curator at the Capitol, gave us a special tour, showing us paintings in offices and committee rooms that most visitors don't get to see. After lunch, we saw even more with a Capitol docent. What a wonderful day!

An office in the State Capitol, with one heck of a gorgeous painting (I wish I'd written down the painter's name) • © 2010 Karen Lynn Ingalls

I'll be sharing some of what I saw and learned in my next few posts here and on my art teaching blog, Napa Valley Art Camp.

Combing through my photographs

Franz Valley School Road vineyard • © 2010 Karen Lynn Ingalls

The next stage of my painting process is looking at all those photographs I took when autumn colors were at their loveliest. As I have nearly 650 photographs to go through, it's a pretty extensive part of the process.

Not only do I look through all the images and choose the ones I like best, but I also crop photos to find new compositions, and adjust the lighting to approximate more nearly my memory (and imagination). I resize and save them, labeling them so that I can identify where I took the photo. The photo above, by the way, was taken on the way to my studio.

Thank heavens for digital photography! It allows me to take plenty of photos, giving me lots of images to work with in the paintings I'll be working on throughout the year.