Painting on a ladder is a tricky business. It’s important to not forget you are on the ladder. But I get forgetful when painting because I’m focused on the effect of color against color. So I grip tightly on the ladder with one hand and paint with the other. So far so good.

What am I doing? Painting the sensation of walking through a birch forest. Their strong noble trunks and magnificent colors of bark and shadow. Breezes stir everything around and make the woods crackle in it’s aliveness. It would be easier to just paint birch trees. No. I want to feel movement in the painting. I want to be surprised by color. I want to feel rejuvenated from walking among birches. I want to feel peaceful.

Yes, this was a very challenging project. I almost gave up but stubbornness led the way and finally helped me to conquer. I am celebrating by sharing the images of the paintings with you.

These paintings are seven feet tall on Sky Cloth. It has an airy weave and organic texture that makes you want to touch it. Go ahead. I encourage it. My Sky Cloth paintings hang on the wall like a large scroll. A pocket at the top and the bottom hold small boards to keep their shape. They are easily rolled up for transporting. Kind of a forest walk “to-go”.

Condensing seven feet of painting into a small electronic image is its own kind of challenge. But you can add the proper scaling with your imagination. I want to share the amazing color and joy in the world around us.

 

 

“Sterling, look at that!”

“Look at what, Felix?”

“That huge box. From Canada.”

“Looks like the artist received another shipment of Kroma paint. Watch, she’ll spend the rest of the day arranging it in her studio. All those tubes of paint go in some sort of order.”

“Paint? What is that?”

“Paint is color. She uses different colors to make paintings. There are a zillion different colors of paint. Every artist chooses their favorites for their working palette. Her palette used to be more traditional.”

“Traditional? You’re throwing those words around again.”

“I saw her looking at a book of paintings by Wolf Kahn one day. After that, she changed her palette and started experimenting. She uses fewer colors now but ones that mean a lot to her personally.”

“Look at that one. Lots of tubes of Benzi Orange. And Cobalt Teal. Ummm…. I like that one. Dioxazine violet. My feathers shimmer in the shadows in Dioxazine violet. I don’t see any black.”

“Felix, she doesn’t use black”.

“Really? That’s crazy, why not?”

“She mixes her darks with colors because she thinks it makes a richer dark that vibrates and doesn’t look dead.”

“Sterling, why are you such a smarty? Next you’ll be telling me you looked in the windows of the Louvre museum in Paris.”

“Nah, too hard to see in those windows. I liked looking in the windows of the Museum d’Orsay better.”

“Yeah, right. You never leave this hill. I would like to get my claws on one of those paint tubes. They are bright and shiny.”

Denali
24″x 18″

“Sterling, What is the artist doing now?”

“What do you mean, Felix?”

“She spends lots of time brushing paint on the sides of her painting. The edges. You know what I mean?”

“She makes changes on it when she changes the front of the painting. The sides appear to be important to her.”

“But why?”

“You often see paintings from the side if you are not directly in front of them. It’s certainly the side we see first from outside her window. Maybe she does it for us! Hahaha.”

“Yeah, right. She doesn’t even know about us.”

“Sometimes I wonder about that, Felix. Sometimes I wonder.”

 

“Sterling, how do you know so much?”

“What, Felix?”

“You know about so many different things but you never leave this little hill.”

“I listen.”

“What? You listen? It’s quiet out here. What do you hear?”

“I listen with my eyes.”

“What? You are a crazy, old bird.”

“You have much to learn, Felix. And I’m not going to teach you. Go away.”

“Sterling, I have a question for you.”

“What is it, Felix?”

“The artist is at the window. What is she staring at? Nothing is moving out here.”

“She is studying the colors in the sky. Humans call it sunset. I have no idea why it fascinates them so much.”

“How useless. You can’t eat it. “

“No, you can’t. Is that all you think about? Get some culture. Maybe she will make a painting.”

“Food is important. I’m hungry. All of the time.”

“Felix, I have an idea. Fly over there and pose in that tree.”

“What? Why?”

“She might make you famous.”