Last week I was a ninja-crazy painting factory, cranking out oil paintings of Mineral King. This is high season in the high country, and it is busy. Gotta get ’em done, visible, and selling.
Sounds a bit like a mercenary, an artist of fortune.
Nah. No fortunes are being made here. Just painting Mineral King.
“Drying Mineral King” means drying the paintings of Mineral King.
Want to see what that looks like?
The paintings start on the peg board in the painting workshop. Then I begin scooting them around outside. The 2 of Sawtooth are currently on the tractor-seat stool outside the studio, getting direct sun and a breeze. The goal is to have them dry enough to place face down on the flatbed scanner without smearing oil paint on the glass.
Here in Central California, we have sunshine and heat and breezes in abundance. I wonder what artists do in other places. . .
Much of the spring and summer so far has been spent working on coloring books (or in Israel) instead of painting. Suddenly, painting Mineral King in oils has become my main focus.
It takes some teeth-gritting intensity and, word-of-the-year, oh-so-tired-of-it, intentionality to stay focused. There is a book to reproof, a coloring book to finish, and never mind about doing laundry by hand because the washer quit (not complaining – it is 28 years old), waiting for the phone repairman (studio phone is broken – has anyone been trying to call??), a coloring book to begin, and a website to keep current during all these sales. Oh, and an art show to prepare for!
But I am not stressed (she says with a twitch). I am painting, and paintings don’t look good if done under undue stress.
Yes, 2 of these are almost the same. I had a planning mishap. Not worried.
The one on the upper left is almost finished. The others are only just begun. They are 8×8″ and 8×10″ and will take longer than the 6×6″.
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
Just a little reminder to myself that I was in Israel. I’d show you a photo of me on a camel, but I looked fat.
THAT stresses me out!!
Yesterday I took a chill-pill to recover from the emotional see-saw of selling, not selling, selling, not selling, sold, not sold, it must only be my friends and relatives who feel sorry for me, OH MY GOODNESS A STRANGER BOUGHT MY ART.
Don’t you just feel exhausted reading that last paragraphical sentence? (Anyone know a good editor??)
These paintings have been languishing, waiting and curing while I work on coloring books. This week I am returning to my oil paints, because customers await Mineral King paintings at the Silver City Store.
For the past several summers, I have sold oil paintings of Mineral King scenes at the Silver City Store.
This summer I took up 3 6×6″ and 3 8×10″. Each time I go to Mineral King, I stop by the store (we think of it as “The Store”) to see how the paintings are selling. I missed a weekend, and then stopped by again.
THEY WERE ALL SOLD!
The reason I stopped by was that I met some great folks who wanted to talk about Israel. Then the woman asked my last name (weird, I know, but someone introduced us by first name and mentioned I had been to Israel) and was all excited to meet me.
Hunh?
Turns out she buys a painting by me each year when she comes to her Mineral King cabin.
It is quite a thrill to meet a stranger who buys my art, because often I wonder if it is just my friends and relatives who feel sorry for me that buy my work.
The business of art is a perilously emotional see-saw.
Please excuse me while I go find a chill-pill and then start painting again.
Feeling like a factory worker or a cog in a wheel, I mixed up some sky color oil paint so I could begin painting Mineral King. Five 6×6″ paintings, on the conveyer belt. (on the stereo, if you must know. Yes, I listen to a stereo that plays CDs. I drive a manual transmission, have a flip phone, and don’t own a microwave either.)
Okay, let’s get some other colors going. This is Farewell Gap, but not the classic scene we discussed on Monday.
(That’s the royal “we”, because as far as I know, it was a monologue rather than a dialogue.)
Oops. Forgot to photograph the in-between stages. These 2 paintings have just the first layer, and they’ll have to dry before I continue.
The morning sun hits that window with good intensity, so I propped them there. Meanwhile, the Oak Grove Bridge languishes in the background.
In the summer, the Silver City Store, 4 miles below Mineral King, sells original oil paintings for me. (For them too, because obviously they have to make money. Duh.)
The subject has to be Mineral King, (more duh, thank you Captain Obvious) and I paint the same scene over and over and over. Sometimes I paint Timber Gap, Sawtooth, or maybe a bridge or a trail. But most people just want this view, what I think of as the classic Mineral King scene:
It sells, I paint more. It sells again, I paint it again. Lucky you, if you bought it recently, because I’ve had lots of practice. This one is #20, but I didn’t always number my paintings, so I feel fairly confident in guessing that I’ve painted it 50 times. It’s on the doors of my painting studio, on the cover of the new coloring book (drawn in ink, not painted), and on the cover of The Cabins of Mineral King (in pencil, not oil paint).
This week we conclude our little run of things for sale (did you notice the pattern?) with oil paintings of Mineral King.
Fridays are for Mineral King, but I haven’t been there since October. Since this is the season when people like to buy stuff, it makes sense to show you the paintings for sale.
Please forgive me if this seems sellsy and pushy. I promise I am not wearing plaid pants, waiting to pounce with false chatty cheer. I am showing you these in case you were looking for something like this. I am here to help you (and no, I am not from the government).
Mineral King Marmot, 6×6″, $60 (and no, I don’t know why it is appearing so large here).
Kaweah Headwaters, 6×6″, $60
Long Way There, 12×16″, $275
Farewell Gap XVIII, 8×10″, $125
Sawtooth XV, 6×6″, $60
Mineral King Valley, 12×16″, $275
Sawtooth XIV, 8×10″, $125
Mineral King AM, 12×16″, $275
Mineral King, 12×16″, $275
Mineral King Trail, 11×14″, $250 (It isn’t this dark in real life – my poor computer skills may be misleading you on this one.)
Farewell Gap, 6×6″, $60
Eagle Lake Trail, 16×20″, $400
These are available on my website, this page: Oil Paintings, Landscapes
There are more but this post is already crazy long. Please excuse the length and enjoy the pictures.
Here are my latest oil paintings of Central California fruits and landscapes, dry, signed, dry again, scanned, varnished and ready to sell!
We spent our last weekend of the season in Mineral King over Columbus Day weekend. The weather was beautiful – about time, after all the smoke this summer! It really seemed weird to shutter things up for the winter when we were running around in shorts and sandals, but it certainly is better than closing in a cold storm.
There hasn’t been very good color this year. It could be due to the drought, although there were 15″ of precipitation this summer (mistakenly reported in an earlier post as happening in July – thank you, Trail Guy, for keeping me straightened out on the facts!) The leaves mostly turned brown early and then fell off. Just turned brown and fell off! Sigh.
Hey! I painted this scene a few years ago. I sort of lost track of the painting – did it sell? Who bought it? Or is it in one of the places that sell my work and I forgot to list it? (Sounds like someone needs to pay closer attention to her business. . .)
This is the part of the trail that looks like a yellow tunnel in some years. These are cottonwood trees. The aspens are further up the trail, but we had work to do instead of popping around chasing colored trees. Such responsible adults.
This was in 2010.
The grasses were sort of yellowish. This coming winter will be a big one, it will end the drought, put lots of white in the mountains and water in the rivers and the lakes and the aquifers and green on the hills. (You listening, God? That is actually a request, not a demand. Amen.)