During this time of convalescence, I am somewhat confined to my home base for painting subjects. I cannot possibly consider this a restriction though, because over the last 30 years, Ann and I have been slowly, intentionally transforming it to be a grand painting subject. Monet’s example was but one of our early inspirations for what might be done by artists with a nose for plants, trees, space organization and ecology—given enough time. Before we even bought this property, we were engaged in learning everything we could about those subjects.

We also understood that Monet had considerably more financial resources to draw upon than we in creating his gardens and famous lily pond. Our property is largely forested and hilly, so we have worked with that and given up the notion that a big lily pond would be very practical. Instead, we decided to learn all about trees, build paths and manage our forest so that it would become aesthetically more beautiful and a world-class habitat for wild things. We still desired water lilies, so we set a 6-foot round galvanized steel tank into our patio and planted water lilies in that instead. This has proved to be a wonderful and easily cared for solution which allows us to paint our lilies up close and personal. Here are some watercolors from that feature.

We also have a large meadow space punctuated by some big old black walnut and red oak trees to consider. The meadow is a key feature of our habitat design since many species of birds and mammals require this mixed environment to thrive. It is also a wonderful subject to paint in all seasons. Over the years we have been planting thousands of Narcissus bulbs in it for an early spring display. After that, we mow the meadow part of the summer, and then let the grass get 4 feet tall before it is cut again in the fall. This tall grass is great habitat for nesting red-winged black birds and good cover for everybody else. A simple wide path mown through that creates a beautiful composition early and late, and we never fail to paint some lovely things there, including this large canvas, Shadow Walk.

Now, most folks don’t have such large amounts of ground to play with, or the desire to maintain it, but that should never limit one’s creativity when it comes to making our homes our subjects. A small tank of water, planted with lilies and a little fountain can create a mini-oasis and will immediately attract frogs and dragonflies. Plant some large ceramic pots of flowers and draping greenery wherever there is space and one has an instant composition.

We have written numerous articles about artists and their gardens — click that tab at the top of the page to access them. Then, let your imagination be your guide!

I am presenting a new exhibition of my work this month which includes older paintings from my personal collection not offered to the public before. The show did not start out to be a retrospective, but is, instead, a creative response to my recent injury, which halted all progress on the new paintings I had in the works in my studio. This left a gap which needed to be filled, so I selected the best of older pieces I had, to add to the exhibition. Now that I see it beautifully presented on the gallery walls, I think that this exhibition is really more interesting than what I had originally planned.

As an example, the painting above, Swan Dance, was created from a moment I saw in the Papal Gardens in Avignon, France. I was there, along with Ann, teaching a watercolor workshop at various locations in the south of France. I had the class set up at an overlook onto the Rhone River which had a spectacular view of the Château-Neuf du Pape vineyards in the distance and the ruins of the famous Pont d’Avignon bridge below. Funny thing is, when I got home, this is the picture I thought was most interesting to me, and remains so, even after repeated visits to Avignon in the years since. The moment matters in art.

Another moment that mattered, was this one—a lovely, foggy morning on a pond nearby, where I have painted often. As I worked, the fog became a moving curtain of light, alternately obscuring and revealing, blurring the line between water and sky. Birds appeared out of the fog and just as quickly disappeared. As I painted, I imagined an artist painting away in a boat floating in that diaphanous space. Perhaps it was me in my studio boat, perhaps it was the Master, Claude Monet, working in his studio boat on the river Epte. The power of mist and light to fire the imagination is the stuff art is made of.

Then there is this watercolor moment—I was standing in the Merced River in Yosemite National Park painting the brilliant September light with a painter friend, Thomas Paquette, when I knocked an expensive brush off my palette into the swift current. Thomas immediately sprang into action and made a dive to save the brush for me! That’s the kind of thing one doesn’t ever forget and we’ve been good friends ever since. Unfortunately for Thomas, he had also soaked his electronic key fob and couldn’t get back in to his van when we finished painting for the day. My brush certainly wasn’t worth the cost of replacing that key fob, and fortunately we got it dried out so it worked again. I am astonished how often plein air work becomes attached to some interesting event happening while we work, and those memories become locked into the paintings. I think it is why I don’t mind keeping those.

This one is my second version of a perfect morning in June in Tuscany, Italy, just after sunrise. Ann and I were teaching another week-long workshop in this picture-postcard perfect landscape. I like to get up before class and paint a warmup picture. These workshops take months of planning and organization to set up, and, despite all of our care, we never know what weather will greet us or other unpredictable local conditions might upset our plans until we actually get there. To our great relief, not only was everything as we planned, but the fields just behind me in this painting were covered in bright red poppies! Of course, that had to be where we would have class later! Another set of wonderful memories locked into a simple painting of a farmer cutting wheat in Italy. This is why I paint outdoors—to grab onto a piece of life!

If you are near, come to the show at the Cider Gallery in Lawrence, Kansas, open on Fridays or with an appointment, until June 22nd. If not, you can still see the exhibition on my site: John Hulsey Fine Art. Look for the Brokeneck Mountain Exhibition tab.

“The lovely flowers embarrass me.

They make me regret I am not a bee.”

– Emily Dickinson

The tiny bee plays a monumental part in making our lives possible. Without their pollination of both wild and cultivated crops, we would lose over a third of our food supply. A quote attributed to Albert Einstein says: “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.” In the spiritual realm, bees have represented a bridge between the natural world and the afterlife, hence the tradition of “telling the bees” when important events (deaths, weddings, etc.) take place. This was common practice throughout European countries. It was believed that if the custom did not take place, the bees would go into mourning and leave the hive, become sick or quit producing honey.

Beekeeping and domestication of bees is evidenced in art and in trac…

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Recently, I had a freak accident, fell and fractured a vertebra in my neck, creating what the doctors refer to as a “hangman’s fracture”. My break was the least serious of those kinds of things, the worst cases being unthinkable. Healing will take some time — it is another mountain to climb, but I will be fine. A thing like that, coming out of the blue, as it did, can change the way a person thinks about their life and perhaps their priorities.

As I was creating work for this exhibition at the time my accident happened, I realized that the opportunity to reshape my vision for this had been thrust upon …

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Gardens have provided immeasurable inspiration to a list of prominent artists beyond what are perhaps the most famous, the gardens of Claude Monet in Giverny. Among the French artists of the time, three who delighted in creating and painting gardens of their own were Gustave Caillebotte, Pierre Bonnard and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

The opening up of trade and travel in the late 1800s brought a surge of new plant species to Europe from around the world. Advances in hybridization and production led to availability of a greater variety of flowers at prices affordable to the individual gardener, not just larger public gardens. Iris and chrysanthemums were exotic new species to the European garden. Garden styles were becoming more naturalistic, steering away from the tight Victorian styles.

For some, the ability to manipulate nature by creating gardens for subjects of their paintings may have been a response to the turbulenc…

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(To read more articles about artists and their gardens (including Frida Kahlo, Gustave Caillebotte, Pierre Bonnard, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and more, type “Artists and Gardens” in the search bar above.)

We take for granted the great variety of colors of water lilies, including those in Monet’s most famous paintings, Les Nymphéas, displayed at the Orangerie Museum in Paris, but they are a relatively recent development. It wasn’t until 1889 at the World’s Fair in Paris that the first colorful water lilies were seen by the public. Before that, the only hardy water lily in Europe was white, but because of the relentless work of Monsieur Latour-Marliac, fair-goers were treated to yellow, pink and deep red water lily varieties for the very first time.

This was a breathtaking achievement in horticulture. Latour-Marliac had worked for decades to hybridize the new colors and they were a sensation, winning a first prize at the World’s Fair. Claude Monet attended …

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“I paint flowers so they will not die.” – Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo’s short life (1907 - 1954) was filled with color. Casa Azul, her home from childhood, remains a legacy to her love of flowers and brilliant color. Today, sixty-seven years after her death, the gardens and home are a museum open to the public. (Be sure to check the Casa Azul website for Covid-19 restrictions.) The garden is maintained as closely as possible to the inspiration that first created it, with plants that were used in Kahlo’s art and in her life, some still flourishing from when she lived there.

In 1929, Kahlo’s father, Guillermo, transferred ownership of the home where Frida was born and had grown up, to Frida and husband, Diego Rivera. They transformed the home and gardens to celebrate indigenous Mexican culture, removing non-native plants and European influences.

Flora and fauna surrounded Kahlo. She wore flowers from her Casa Azul garden in her hair, filled the house …

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We received a response to our article “Living in the Ow” from artist Shere Chamness, who shared with us her challenges with having to limit her outdoor painting time in the bright sun due to eye surgeries.

Her solution? Creating tiny fifteen-minute-only paintings using Altoids tins. To her surprise, it was not only fun but improved her overall skills. We, too, have found it interesting that unexpected forced limitations often kick our creativity into new exciting spaces.

Shere writes: “Somehow, doing the quick little plein air paintings helped me move past my previous weaknesses!

It forced me to work on composition, proportions, color mixing and capturing a non-detailed image in a short time. And, the little tiny paintings are still fun.

I just completed my 60th one. Each canvas is just 1.75” x 3.25”. I carry all the supplies I need in a child’s insulated lunch pack.

Anyway, my main message is that your injury might end up pushing you beyond your lim…

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The Color Green

Mixing accurate and harmonious greens can be a real challenge for the painter. Trial and error and lots of practice often leads each artist toward developing favorite mixes of greens which they use reliably in their work. To add complexity to the subject, recent scientific research has revealed that men and women perceive greens differently. (See “Tomato Tomahto”). Different seasons and different climate zones can require modulations of the cool/warm relationships of the greens in our palettes, and we must be aware of these changes as we travel or the entire painting will be off. For example, spring greens can be shockingly bright against the muted winter colors often still present. These fading winter tones create a backdrop that allows the sparkle of spring colors to stand out for a few weeks. But it won’t be long before what we call “The Wall of Green” descends upon the landscape, and those bright greens gain depth…

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For many years now, Ann and I have had a running debate about the color green. Specifically, the greens I mix and use in my landscape paintings vs. the greens she mixes for hers. She thinks my greens tend toward the too-blue side and I often find that her greens, especially in foliage, tend toward the too-yellow. She claims that she just sees the colors differently than I do, and to that, there is no logical rebuttal. We can never see eye-to-eye, so to speak, on this subject, and now we may know why.

There is an article by Libby Copeland from the Smithsonian magazine that reveals new research on the differences in perception and visual acuity between the sexes. Neuroscientists, led by Israel Abramov at CUNY’s Brooklyn College, administered a series of visual tests to a group of men and women, and the results are illuminating. Abramov spent fifty years studying human vision and the neural mechanisms that determine how we perceive colors.

While men have an advantage in detecting distant…

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The early arrival of spring here this year has caused an explosion of rich “spring” greens on the ground and in lacy cascades in the tree canopies. With our blue skies and puffy cumulus clouds, it is an inspiring and cheerful sight after winter. Green becomes a dominant color again in our plein air palettes, especially the mixes with cadmium lemon and cobalt. It is a moment when the rhythmic architecture and warm tones of the winter tree trunks take on a new dimension while wearing their new scarves and hats of bright spring colors. It is a great time to be painting outside, and we try to get it while it is here, for we know what is coming next. The Wall of Green.

Once the trees move beyond the bright introductory spring number, the forest fills in almost top to bottom with a homogeneous blanket of deep summer green. In summer, Nature’s exuberant burst of chlorophyll dares us to discern between the many subtle nuances of g…

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Being laid up the way I (John) am, currently has the benefit of lots of time just to think about art and puzzle over the brokenness in the world. Rather than retreat in despair to the solitudes of my studio as a reaction to the darkness outside, I’m choosing to agree with the late Toni Morrison’s take on times like these. In 2004, she said,

“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language.That is how civilizations heal. I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge - even wisdom. Like art.”

Wise words indeed for all of us Sensitives who can easily fall into feeling alone, hurt and abandoned by the world, isolated as many of us are who …

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I recently suffered a debilitating injury to my neck, which will require wearing a brace for several months until my “Hangman’s Fracture” can heal up. Although It sounds far worse than it is, I still have had to change my world around to accommodate my restricted mobility. This is a challenge for any creative person, at any stage of life, especially for those, like myself, who have always painted on their feet, walking back and forth all day from palette to easel. It will be some weeks before I am able to paint again, even sitting. What to do?

I am seventy-two this year, still physically fit, aware of time slipping away, and motivated by the many, many things I wish to say in my art. It has taken me a lifetime to get here and to understand what is important to say and share, and I am suddenly sidelined from my goals. Frustrating. Challenging. Perhaps even life-changing, but strangely, not depressing. Some part of me recognizes that thi…

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At turbulent times such as these, it is art that we return to for comfort and inspiration. Like old friends, our favorite paintings calm and soothe and empower us in our own work. A dedication to our art sometimes forces us to not be able to make as strong of a commitment to other important issues as we would like. Although we try to be of service as often as we can and to be thoughtful citizens, we sacrifice for our passion as artists and sometimes question if it is enough.

However, we know through long experience that following our passion, even in difficult periods, is important and can be inspirational to others now and in the future as well. The history of art is replete with similar lessons to which we can turn for guidance.

Monet’s massively gorgeous Nymphaea paintings have inspired generations and have become some of the most recognizable and iconic paintings…

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Fast forward 1200 miles and forty-two year…

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We are always trying different painting tools in an effort to discover new ways of image making. Different tools can help us get out of our comfort zones, where we are divorced from familiar, reliable techniques and perhaps even a little uneasy with the process. This is good! Good art can come from being “in the zone”, or highly focused on what we are doing, but it can also come from a place where the outcome is highly uncertain and we no longer have the accustomed control of our materials. This is the area where the mind can play more freely with ideas, because our expectations of so-called success are different than when we work with our usual reliable techniques. The only way to learn about a new tool is to experiment, play, have fun and see what is possible. If you have never tried painting with knives before and you’d like to shake up your painting style a bit, we hope this article will encourage you to do so.

Before I begin painting, I prefer to develop the main mass-tones on my palette by mixing color strings. This is my initial string which covers the first lay-down of cool yellows and greens. Here I have started the string with Cadmium Yellow Medium into Cobalt Blue, then Cadmium Lemon in the center into Cobalt Blue and then Ultramarine for the deepest blue-greens. This string is about 24 inches across.

I will use this palette mix for the entire painting, adding or side-mixing additional warmer or cooler passages from this master string as needed. For example, when I need a very warm orangeish color, I’ll draw paint from my master string off to the side and add Cadmium Orange or maybe a bit of Cadmium Red to create what is needed. In this way, my palette remains harmonized to the original color string and that harmony unites the painting.

This is my 11.5 x 27.5” masonite panel which I have sealed and triple-primed with gesso. My drawing is fairly precise, having worked out the composition in sketches. I use charcoal or pencil and seal that with a light spray of fixative. My initial paint strokes go down in the center so that I can work out gradually to the ends.

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In a still very relevant article from The New York Times titled, “Why We Love Beautiful Things”, the late architect and author, Lance Hosey, wrote about research findings and his opinions on the subject. Lance Hosey, former chief sustainability officer at the architecture firm RTKL, was the author of the book “The Shape of Green: Aesthetics, Ecology, and Design.”

The focus of his article is on all the effort and money that is being applied to attempt to quantify and systematize the sort of designs and images which appeal to most people. Studies have found that workers tend to be more productive when they can see the outdoors from their work spaces and that images of landscapes can help to speed patient recovery in hospitals. Hosey writes that findings also show that the visual patterns of fractals in nature at a particular mathematical density can reduce test subjects’ stress levels by as much as 60 percent, simply by being in view. The …

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Artists often search for ways to expand their creative expression through experimentation in new mediums. In the case of working with glass, artistry is combined with specialized technical skills and sometimes even complex engineering equations (large stained glass windows, for example) often requiring collaborations with a team of artisans and craftspeople. We were fascinated to discover a small group of post-Impressionist European painters who expanded their artistic oeuvres by making glass artworks and windows.

The art of stained glass has a long ecclesiastical history. Early church windows (dating as far back as the fourth and fifth centuries) were made with thinly sliced alabaster creating translucent light effects. Advances in glass making throughout time have allowed for great ranges of color to become available to artists. Traditionally, stained glass is made by adding metallic salts to the glass during its manufacture. Another technique used is to paint specially formulated colors onto glass directly. The painted colors and glass are then fused together by heat.

Gemmail (from the French for “enamel gem”) is another glass working technique developed in the 1930s. It employs layering hundreds of pieces of colored glass with adhesives onto panels illuminated from behind. The technique was first used by artist Jean Crotti in collaboration with lighting expert and artist, Roger Malherbe-Navarre. Their studio in Paris employed specialists working with artists to recreate their paintings in the new glass medium. The glass layers were put into an enamel-like solution and heated in kilns to fuse them all together. Initially the process was used mainly to reproduce existing paintings. However, young artists began to experiment in the process with their own original compositions when the technique became more well known.

Henri Matisse - 1869-1954

“Creativity takes courage.”

Matisse changed everything. His bright colors and decorative abstracted forms redefined contemporary art at the beginning of the 20th century. He was a prolific artist, much admired by Picasso and others who followed. Late in his life, after serious complications from cancer surgery left him bedridden for several months and then wheel-chair bound, Matisse funneled his creativity into paper cutouts. It seems a natural transition to see his work then progress into stained glass.

Matisse Chapel Stained Glass (Monica Arellano Ongpin via Flickr)

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One of the things we would very much like to see in person, is the light effect created by the solstice sun through the stained glass windows of Antoni Gaudí’s fantastic Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.

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