Guest Blogger Master Painter Jess Anderson

 

Meadowlake Studios

Guest Blogger Jess Anderson is not only a master painter, he is a great teacher.  In this guest post he walks us through step by step his process painting “Don’t Be A Chicken”.

Jess Anderson

I hope all of you are doing well.  The rainy season has hit, here in Oregon, and it’s come a bit early.  Usually, it waits until Halloween night.  The kids always seem to have to go Trick-or-Treating in the rain.  I’ve spent a lot of time the past few weeks getting things on the place ready for that season.  You know, new roof on the barn, poured a concrete floor in it too, cut up all the limbs that fell on my garage last winter…. You know, just the ordinary stuff.  I have all of my volatile plants inside the greenhouse now, safe from freezing.  It was time to go back to the studio and do what I love better.

 

The reference photos came from a fine photographer named Steve Carn.  Steve is an incredible photographer and I’m so pleased that he has offered to help me with reference material.  He is from northern Utah and shot these photos in Glacier National Park, at a place called “Goat Lick”.  It seems when the goats need salt or other minerals, this is the place to go.  The stuff leeches out of the rock layers.  It’s their health food store, furnished by Mother Nature herself. 

I have a number of these wonderful people who have helped me a lot with reference material.  I would love to be up there on the mountain myself, but sometimes that stays a dream for longer than we want.  He and I have some trips planned up there in the future.

 

I really enjoyed doing this painting.  I went back and used my acrylics once again.  I haven’t used them since last year and didn’t want to lose my edge, the one I took a while figuring out.  I started off only going to use them for my under painting, but ended up just finishing it all in acrylics.  I’ve entitled this one, “Don’t Be a Chicken”.  It just seems to me that one young one is taunting the other.  I hope you enjoy my journey on this painting.

 

I drew this layout directly onto the canvas.  It’s something I don’t normally do.  Don’t ask me why I did this time.

It’s simple because I have done so much drawing in my life that I know most of it will be done with my brush.

 

I started with my background using mainly a middle tone but filling in the strongest shadows.

A good contrast is something I always try to put into my work.

 

 

 

As you can see, there is absolutely no detail used at this point, just values giving me a shape to work with.  This is where a sense of composition is so very important.

 

 

 

A soft glaze to warm it up and I’ve started doing my detail work.  There are a million little rocks, and little detail parts of all the larger ones.  It’s a most important part to make this work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Using strong value changes will give me that contrast that I’m looking for.  It also gives my composition the depth it needs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The rocks break away from the massive rock formation in small pieces.  This is so good for the composition too.  It keeps it from getting boring so that the eyes have many different

Things to ingest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now that my background is blocked in I start laying in the basic color I want to work on with the goat.

 

 

 

As I get that back color on the goat I start giving it shape with texture.  There is a lot of texture on these guys.  To me, texture and contrast are some of the most important things to put into the painting.  Who wants to look at a slick haired goat, anyway!

 

 

 

 

With most of the work done on the nanny I’ve started on the upper kid.  They are able to climb on things like this at such a young age.  It’s important to learn this as their lives are focused around it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

One baby down and the bottom one to go.  He looks reluctant to climb on these rough rocks.  Must be his sister up above taunting him to go ahead and climb.  Once he’s blocked in I will then work all over the painting.  A little detain here, some highlights there, a little more deepening of the shadows.  You spend a lot of time at this stage.  There are a million little brush strokes on this.  I’ve used a very limited palette on this, something I like.  I will try to do more like that in the future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here is the finished painting.

 

“Don’t Be A Chicken”   acrylics on canvas   24”x12”  Framed  

https://www.jessanderson.com/

    

Here is a photo of the painting inside its frame.  I really like the way this frame finished it off. I hope you are all having a wonderful day!  Mine will get better soon! 

People ask me….”How long did it take you to do this.”  It is probably the most asked question ever asked of an artist.  I have found that this is the best answer.  I got my first set of oils when I was 11.  I am now 74 and have painted my whole life.  So, that being said, it has taken me 63 years to do this.  I hope you enjoyed this.  I certainly loved doing it.   JESS

It has been a long, long two years

Life was looking good the Fall of 2019.  The annual Arts Alliance of Yamhill County  sponsored Art Harvest Studio Tour  was great.  Driving around Yamhill County with the 2019 Fall colors is pure joy. We were fortunate to interview and film several of the Tour artists. We went to their studios and learned a lot about different art mediums. 

Master Painter Jess Anderson

We visited Master Painter Jess Anderson at the studio just outside of Sheridan, Oregon. 

 

 

Felt Artist Jennifer Bencharsky

 

 

We visited Jennifer Bencharsky who does beautiful felt work and lives in Newberg which is on the other side of the County. 

 

As the Tour does, it gave us an excuse to travel from one side of beautiful Yamhill County  to the other and see some fantastic art and meet and talk with many great talented artists. You can see those at Arts Alive: Art Harvest Studio Tour on Youtube.

 You all know what happened in 2020 and this year 2021.  The Art Harvest Studio Tour cancelled both years. All of the Arts seemed to go into a stress induced shock and a kind of hibernation. For Liz and I at Meadowlake Studios the Arts Alive video interviews were shut down.  At least we hope it is hibernation because there are signs the Arts are beginning to wake up and roam around the landscape again. 

One art exception to hibernation might be writing and writers.  Literary journals expanded across the internet.  I guess for many writers the social isolation was a fantastic excuse to finish that novel, write short stories, work on a movie script, and scratch out some poems.  

Unfortunately with our video productions stymied, with my Poetry On Demand events at art and wine gatherings cancelled, going out to crowded restaurants for dinner or out to clubs to hear music was impossible, I went into a personal hibernation, which I'm finally beginning to wake.  

I really missed the Poetry On Demand events. During McMinnville and Newberg downtown association wine and art nights, we set up a table in a busy wine tasting bar, sat behind our manual typewriters, wrote poems as topics were given to us under pressure to finish while the people were sipping wine or having dinner.  It was wonderful to hand a freshly typed poem to the person who had given the topic and see their reaction to the poem they had prompted. The past two years I missed that stress and creativity.  One good thing. We did publish a collection of our 2018 and 2019 Poetry On Demand poems.

I've been off and on with this blog over the years. I have excuses. Now in late Fall 2021 as I am beginning to stir from my almost two year long stupor, shaking off the stress, emerging lean and hungry, I will try to pick up this blog which I've neglected.

One Poem A Day Won't Kill You in April National Poetry Month

One Poem A Day Won't Kill You project started showing on McMinnville Community Media Monday April 1st.  I have begun to post the readings on our Youtube channel today.  We started asking folks about their favorite poems and filming in May 2012.  Most of the readings were completed by mid-September.  By the end of February, 2013 the editing was done.  Seeing it in motion after all these months of putting it together gives me a feeling of lightness, of youth, of anything is possible.  Those pleasant delusions we give ourselves when we complete a "job of work" as my dad used to say.

  

One Poem A Day Won't Kill You is the idea of poet Phoebe Newman.  She explained to Arts Alive host Lynda Phillippi during a recent appearance on the show that the origins of the phrase came as a personal exhortation.  She had recently received her Master of Fine Arts degree in writing (primarily poetry) and she and her husband had moved to Ketchican Alaska.  She began to struggle to maintain her motivation to continue writing regularly.  She began to say to herself, "One Poem A Day Won't Kill You" as a way to tell herself to write a poem a day. 

In the mid-1990s as a way to encourage poetry in KetchiKan she went to the local public access radio station (cite, call and web) and put out several public service requests for local folks to sign up to read their favorite poem on the radio during the month of April, which is National Poetry Month.  The response was over whelming.  She called her radio show "One Poem A Day Won't Kill You".  She produced the show for ten years.  The show is still going on in Ketchican.  This will be its 18th year.

We have been filming poetry readings and last year we filmed Phoebe reading selections from her books of poetry.    She asked us if we would like to do video of Yamhill County folks reading their favorite poems.  I had to think about it.  The studio approach of bringing people in to the studio Phoebe used for her radio program.  Bringing people into the MCM studio (cite) to read was very doable.  Using the studio has some advantages.  It is efficient.  People are scheduled in, maybe several in a day, they are taped reading, little editing and it is done.  The TV studio also has some disadvantages.  The studio can be pretty intimidating with the lights and cameras.  There needs to be a crew for cameras and control room.  And most importantly it can be visually boring and for a visual medium that is not a good thing. 

We decided to film people reading poems where ever they felt comfortable.  We filmed in gardens, back yards, kitchens, living rooms, city streets.  Each location was a challenge for lighting and for audio.  I learned a lot about camera settings. Then it sometimes got complicated in editing.  Overall, the filming the readings in field locations added to the uniqueness of each reading.

The other lesson this project has helped me learn about is copyright permissions.  Just finding out whom to ask to get permission is a lot of work and can be very frustrating.   Since I volunteer and consider our video endeavors as completely non-commercial and educational, I am not always generous in my thoughts about those who want money to allow us to use the poem or music in what amounts to free advertising for them.   They say things get easier as you do them.  I hope so.

I will be posting the readings the day after they have been aired on MCM and thinking about a follow up show reflecting on the making of One Poem A Day Won't Kill You.

Do It Yourself: Pork Chops to Ham Hocks

Lisbon, Portugal Meat Shop

When we were in Portugal a few years ago we discovered meat for sale did not have to be fattened down in styrofoam trays with clear plastic wrap like in our local supermarkets.  We feel fortunate to be living in the Yamhill County, Carlton and McMinnville, Oregon area because along with the emergence of vineyards and wineries, it has a "foodie" focus.  Food is a big part of our culture here.

Maybe it is our personal experiences as native Oregonians growing up in a time when it was okay and kind of expected that friends and families would cut up their own deer, elk, beef or hog and put it in the freezer, we were excited when we heard the Friends of the   McMinnville Public Library Explore Oregon Series was going to feature a talk by Chef Eric Ferguson of Nick's Italian Cafe  and Fino in Fondo.

We thought Eric was going to give a straight ahead discussion of the Fino in Fondo Italian sausage process.  When we talked with Eric a few days before his Explore Oregon presentation he told us he planned on cutting up a half a pig.  Okay.  The Library was an interesting venue for cutting up a pig.

Eric did a great job of explaining what he was doing and why.  He demonstrated various cuts and he gave advice from holding a knife to where to cut.  He made wonderful suggestions for cooking various cuts.

He was asked if the Italian style sausages he makes a Fino in Fondo are raw.  He explained the sausages are ground meat, spices, good bacteria stuffed into casings and fermented.  The Italian style sausages are not cooked, they are fermented product like wine.

Eric is eloquent in his enthusiasm for food and the need to be connected to the food we eat.