Today's painting is the fog one I worked a little more  .Plus the write up for the Book of Washington State Park that my two paintings will be apart of.

ANY TIME Fog Over Georgia Pacific 9x12 oil by Joy Olney

PAWA State Park Centennial Exhibition

Our ninth grade art teacher, Mr. Rainy, would send us out side behind our school to paint the seasons in watercolor. I enjoyed the quiet breaks from the hectic, noisy school day.

At the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where I studied for 5 years, Morris Blackburn would take his student on field trips to a fishing village. His serious love of out door painting was contagious. Blackburn studied from a student of William Merritt Chase. I learned so much from this instructor after he upset me by getting angry at me for not having three distinct values in a print I made for him when I was 18. The next 4 years he was my mentor and taught me to paint and draw from my center and not with my head. I learned so many valuable lessons from him.

I focus mainly on figure drawing and painting in the east coast but still went out to paint with friends in small parks, the seashore and cityscapes. When we moved to the northwest, I found myself painting outdoors more and more, adding figures of my family and friend to the paintings.

Painting with other has it advantages in that you can get up from your supplies and walk off if you need to know your things are safe. Flexibility and compromise is important when painting with other for they may not like a spot you are excited about and prefer another place to paint.  When I paint with other artist, I often find my style is to paint faster then they do, so I take extra canvases of different sizes. I try to capture the essence of a place with as little painting as possible.

Then I paint landscapes in my studio I use a combination of photos and my oil sketches. The camera doesn’t always capture the colors as I see them.

Each State Park has its own character. In my paintings of Bowman State Park I wanted to convey the peace and tranquility I feel in that park. It’s a place I’ve been to many times, in many seasons and I always feel at peace there. Outside, I often paint alone. I enjoy being alone but welcome the comments of people walking by who stop to chat, especially the children, who are so candid. A couple of times the painting I was working on sold to the person who stopped to watch me paint. One person asked me to take out the dog in the painting because she wanted to give it to someone who didn’t like dogs. I did a second painting for her with out a dog. The women cried when she was presented my painting by the women who bought it from me.

If I can paint a painting that captures something of a place and affects someone else in a positive way I’m happy.