MassieArt

I went home to Cherokee, North Carolina for Thanksgiving with relatives  this past November. While there, I happened on a beautiful mountain stream, the Oconoluftee, on the way to my cousins home. As a mountain landscape artist, I especially love painting waterfalls and mountain lakes. Seeing this reminded  me that wherever we may travel we can usually find the subject matter that we enjoy the most, even when far from home. There are, after all, people everywhere for portrait painters,  and if you love buildings there are structures of all shapes and sizes around the world, the same with flora and fauna, animals, children….and, of course, water!

As a landscape artist, I can relate to the description of “placefulness” by Christian McEwen in his book, World Enough and Time: On Creativity and Slowing Down. I have experienced those moments of complete immersion, mindful of the perfection of the place and eager to capture the sights, values and forms for future paintings. One such hike was Plain of Six Glaciers this summer where the 7 mile, 1100 foot elevation gain to a max of 7000 feet  up the valley at the head of Lake Louise presented flooded trail, ledges with chains, and avalanches thundering down. A trail like this employs all your senses- physical, mental and spiritual. If your subject doesn’t excite you in this way, you should ask yourself , why?

As an artist, in the Canadian Rockies, I frequently revisit favourite areas. I have been to Lake O’Hara every hiking season for the past 22 years, and I have been to Lake Agnes almost every year since arriving in 1976. Why? Because it is always different, or I see something- a view, shadows, weather, a flower, a colour- I had not seen before. On this special day, it was an avalanche across the area where I am standing as my son and I were halfway across the lake. Some artists like to get to know their subject intimately, O’Keeffe had the desert, Charlie Russell cowboys in Montana, Andrew Wyeth had Chadds Ford. An artist has to find their “angle of reponse”- the pace where they come to rest and makes them the best they can be.

Work that will be in the Whyte Museum Watermedia Show, Jan. 10/13

Work from the Thursday Morning Advanced Class…