ARTFINDER: An Old Fashioned Christmas by Richard De Wolfe - At the turn of the century, the main mode of wi...

ARTFINDER: An Old Fashioned Christmas by Richard De Wolfe - At the turn of the century, the main mode of wi...

 "An Old Fashioned Christmas" by Richard De Wolfe 30" x 48" alkyd on canvas

At the turn of the century, the main mode of winter
transportation was by horse drawn sleigh or “cutter” as depicted here.  The scene is typical of many
communities in Eastern Canada and the North Eastern United States.  It is dawn on Christmas morning, and
people are gathering at the church for an early Christmas service.

 Many modern day Amish and Mennonite families still travel in horse drawn vehicles and sleighs in winter, though the type that they favour are much less flambouyant than this one.

A Visit to the Brandywine River Museum at Chadd's Ford, Pennsylvania

Early this spring, my wife and I had a short vacation at Atlantic Beach, North Carolina.  We enjoyed the  east coast in April, when the beach was quiet and the sun was growing warmer each day.  We drove from Southern Ontario to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, taking in the beauty of the countryside in spring and making a few stops along the way.  One short week of relaxation and then it was time to go home once more.

 The old grist mill at the front entrance to the museum

On our return drive, we made a stop at the Brandywine River Museum.  Exhibiting American art in a 19th-century grist mill, the Brandywine River Museum is internationally known for its unparalleled collection of works by three generations of Wyeths and its fine collection of American illustration, still life and landscape painting.  The museum is located on the banks of Brandywine Creek at Chadd's Ford, Pennsylvania.

A view that shows the modern gallery complex behind the grist mill

The gallery features the work of many of my all-time favourite artists and illustrators such as Howard Pyle and N. C. Wyeth.  To see this collection of masterful work at this legendary location was one of the top things to do on my 'bucket list'.  I had anticipated just such a visit for many years and I was not disappointed!  Seeing so many paintings and illustrations that I had previously only seen in books and magazines was a dream come true!

 My wife Mary enjoying the multiple works on display in the museum

The roads leading in to the museum location are enchanting themselves, but the old grist mill that fronts the complex, as well as the ultra-modern main structure that has been added on as exhibition space are well worth the visit.  The museum has an undulating glass wall that faces the creek and gives the whole complex a feeling of oneness with nature.  The museum exhibition halls are rustic and simple, with lighting that focuses on the paintings that adorne each wall.  The gift shop is a treasure trove of books and collectible items that feature the art and artists within its walls.  If you are like me and enjoy traditional art that tells a story, this is a place you will want to visit.  I hope to return as often as I can.

One of the many paintings by Howard Pyle

I stand face to face with the artistic icon, N. C. Wyeth

Barn on Hunt Road

'Barn on Hunt Road'  7X9 inches  

It was late in the season, one day last summer, when I drove past this aging old bank barn on a side road a few miles northwest of Kingston, Ontario.  The missing boards, rusted metal roofing, along with the split rail fence really caught my eye.  Unfortunately, I didn't have the time to concentrate on a larger painting at that time, but I intended to return at a later date and spend more time.

I managed to get this small painting completed and then filed it away in the back of my mind to follow up in the weeks ahead.  The spot was really charming and I really wanted to make the most of it.  Finally, the day came when my objective for the day was to create a larger plein air painting of 'The Barn on Hunt Road'.  The weather was perfect that day, sunny and warm, with nice cloud formations starting to build but no dreaded winds to topple my french easle!  With great anticipation, I struck out for the location along the dirt road where I had found this wonderful subject.  Alas, to my dismay, when I arrived at the correct location, all was lost.  The beautiful, historic old barn had been bulldozed and the land was now scraped flat!  Another rustic scene had been changed forever.

Situations like this are one of the reasons I love to paint the landscapes around me.  I never know when they will cease to exist and could be lost forever.  If a painting or at least a photo is made then there is  a record of something that can never be recreated in just the same way again.  Fortunately, I did complete this small painting and I did take some photos that day, so maybe a larger work will one day sit on my studio easel!

I Remember When

The weather has been very nice here in Southern Ontario for the past month.  I have really enjoyed it but of course it took me away from the computer and my blog.  During that time I managed to get some plein air painting done.  I love to be outdoors on warm, sunny autumn days, and this year the opportunities to do so were terrific.  Hurricane Sandy was supposed to hit us pretty hard after it came ashore in New York and New Jersey, but fortunately for folks in Southern Ontario, it had pretty well blown itself out by the time it got here.  We sure felt bad for the shoreline residents of those US states who were devistated by the storm.  Many of them lost everything, including the land where their homes once sat.  It makes you realize just how lucky you are and that you should appreciate everything and everyone you have in your life.

I was also busy with my art exhibit in Kingston, Ontario during the month of October.  My opening at the beginning of the month was a great success, with a good turnout and lots of interest.  I sold a number of paintings and obtained a few commissions to keep me busy too.

I Remember When 12 X 16 Alkyd on panel  Sold

This is a plein air painting that I did a number of years ago.  The location is a very narrow country road in Eldon Township, well to the north and somewhat east of the city of Toronto, Ontario.  The land was still being worked, but the house and barns had been abandoned long ago.  Places like this are full of mystery and I always wonder what interesting stories they could tell of days gone by and lives lived before my time.

I sold this painting in my recent art show, so it has gone to a new owner and a new home.  I hope the new owner can find as much enjoyment in it as I did when I painted it on that now distant autumn day.

A Day in Rome

We visited Rome for one busy day.  After a long drive from the port of Civitavecchia, our tour bus became lost in Rome.  It turned out that the driver had never been to Rome before!  It is a very busy city with a lot of traffic congestion.  The old walled city within takes you back in time from the moment you enter the gates.

The statues and building facades are all very beautiful.  This is part of the dramatic equestrian art that embellishes the Trevi Fountain.

The Pantheon was a beautiful, domed building with massive columns adorning the entrance.  It is filled with art and artifacts of the early church.  Raphael's tomb is within.

This delicately carved pair of doves hang suspended over the tomb of the artist Raphael.

We did not stop at the Coliseum but only saw it from the tour bus as we worked our way past it in afternoon traffic.  We had to hurry, we were on our way to Vatican City and St. Peter's Basilica!

Milan, Italy

Milan was the next stop on our cruise.  This is another beautiful European city filled with historic monuments and buildings.  Art is everywhere!

Medieval sculptures and ornamentations are the order of the day in the old parts of the city.

I found the contrast between old and modern technology to be very interesting.

The French Riviera

It  was more than a month ago that I promised to post to my blog during our 12 day cruise of the Mediterranean.  Obviously, that did not happen!  We were so busy touring in each port that I did not get a chance to do much else.  This cruise was fabulous but exhausting!

I expected to see many statues and monuments 'decorated' like this ediface over a doorway, but surprisingly, this was one of the few.  Aix en Provence was a very clean town on the French Riviera.

The old part of the town was filled with delightful inner courtyards such as this one, which is now part of the university that is located there.

This fountain was a beautiful spot in the center of the old town, and students seem to congregate there, to enjoy the sun, to read and to socialize.  Aix en Provence was one of my favourite places on the cruise, offering many wonderful subjects to photograph and to paint.  This is the town where the painter Paul Cezanne lived.  We ate lunch in the cafe where he often spent his afternoons.

Mediterranean Cruise

I arrived in Barcelona early yesterday morning to begin a twelve day Mediterranean cruise.  From here we will travel to Marseilles, France, Savona, Rome and Naples, Italy, Dubrovnik, Croatia, Venice, Italy, Messina, Sicily and then back to Barcelona!  There should be much inspiration for painting along the way!

The picture above shows the Mirador de Colom, a monument to Christopher Columbus, in Barcelona, near our hotel.

Columns from the Temple of Augustus, preserved in Barcelona, inside a building. 

I will post a few photos from the ports we visit over the course of the next two weeks.  This is my first visit to Europe and I am sure I will be filled with artistic inspiration all along the way.  There will be a great deal of art to admire and much architecture to see.  I will keep you posted.

Holly Hocks

My wife and I used to own a farm on Lake Simcoe, in Ontario, Canada.  For many years, this was the view from my art studio.  The north window faced this barn wall and pasture, where I planted holly hocks, which we enjoyed every summer.  

I enjoy looking at paintings that I have done in the past, that show places and things that may no longer exist as they once were.  It brings back fond memories in a way that only a painting can.  Not only does it record the way it looked, but also the way it made me feel.

This painting measures 16 inches high by 20 inches wide.  Friends of ours purchased it at one of my art shows a few years ago and they seem to enjoy it too.  Prints are available here.

Across the Miles - Step 5

I have now blocked in the entire canvas with colour.  Finishing the snow-cover changes the mood and the look of the painting quite drastically. This gives me a really good idea of how the finished painting will look.  The contours, light and shadows in the snow requires a subtle touch.  It is important to create the illusion of an undulating plane, falling away from the foreground to the mountains in the distance.  The roadway must also appear to 'sit' into the snow rather than on top of it.  The fence now appears to stand up from the snow, three dimensionally.

Painting and refining the white lettering on the side of the postman's sleigh is meticulous work and requires patience.  There is more work in this painting than I expected!

Across the Miles - Step 4

I continue the process of painting from back to front.  I render the barn in the distance, then proceed to the farm house in the middle ground.  Once again, I am choosing warm colours to keep this winter picture from becoming too 'cold'.

The next thing I tackle is the horse pulling the mail sleigh.   This is a critical element in the painting, essentially the center of interest so I must take great care in how I paint it.   I choose to make the horse black to create a high contrast with the white snow around it.

At this stage, I have left out the snow in the middle ground and started blocking in basic colour and detail on the rail fence in the foreground.  This helps me to keep a visual balance throughout the painting.  I have included the rail fence in the composition in order to add 'weight' to the lower portion and to guide the eye back toward the center of interest.

Sleigh Ride!

This painting has been very popular for my collectors and also licensing clients. It is the perfect Christmas image, both nostalgic and exciting! The horses are galloping briskly along the roadway with a frisky dog leading the way. The period dress of the sleigh's occupants suggest Victorian times, when horse and sleigh were the main mode of winter transportation. You might also notice a buffalo skin rug in their laps, which was used to keep travellers warm. The old wooden pump in the lower right corner is now a thing of the past. These pumps were carved entirely out of wood by skilled craftsmen!

The limestone house in the background was once owned by my wife and I. The beautiful blue spruce tree stands just as I have painted it, beside the house in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. The historic stone church in the background actually exists in Barriefield, just across the Rideau River.

I chose to paint a colourful winter sky in keeping with the animated feeling of the overall painting. This gave me the opportunity to reflect all of these colours in the snow and gives the picture additional life. The painting measures 18 inches high by 24 inches wide. It is painted in alkyd paint on a canvas support. The original is not for sale, but prints are available at: http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/richard-de-wolfe.html Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

An Old Fashioned Christmas

I thought it was time to post a real Christmas painting. I call this one "An Old Fashioned Christmas". Plenty of nostalgia depicted here, about a much slower and innocent time, when most people lived in the country or at least very small towns and villages across Canada and the United States. In those days the main mode of winter transportation was by horse drawn sleigh or 'cutter'. The scene is typical of many communities in Easter Canada and the North- eastern United States. It is dawn on Christmas morning, and people are gathering at the church for an Early Christmas service.

My composition is based on an "S" pattern. The eye enters from the lower left following the direction of the horse and sleigh, over the bridge to where the figures in front of the church are congregated, and finally the church itself. The stone mill beside the church and the mail boxes in the lower right corner lead the eye back to the horse and sleigh approaching the bridge and the whole process is repeated. The snow covered spruce tree acts as a visual stop and keeps the eye from wandering off to the left.

The painting measures 48 inches wide by 30 inches high. It is painted on stretched canvas, and as I usually do, I worked in alkyd paint. I found this cutter in a Sotheby's auction catalogue and I loved the ornate style. It is being pulled smartly by a high stepping Hackney Horse.

Confederation Park

I love to paint pictures of the Thousand Islands, the St. Lawrence River and boats. This painting is one that I did several years ago. It is the Confederation Boat Basin in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, not far from where I live. In the background is Kingston City Hall and Confederation Park. This is a great place to spend a summer evening near the water when the weather is warm. The view here is from the outer docks, looking back toward the lights of downtown Kingston. The sunset is rapidly fading into twilight and the ducks have settled for the night in the shelter of a boat slip in the foreground.

The painting is sixteen inches wide by twenty inches high. It is painted on cotton canvas with alkyd paint. Prints are available.

This Time For Sure & Home For Supper

This one is called "This Time For Sure". I wanted to paint a typical day of pickup hockey, played by a bunch of country kids, on a frozen farm pond. When I was a kid, we played like this, sporting any equipment that we had. Many times we would not have skates available and we would play in our boots. The 'net' would usually be non-existant too, and we would improvise with a couple of blocks of firewood from home.

Once again, this painting is done in alkyd oil on stretched canvas and measures 16 inches by 20 inches.

This one is called "Home For Supper". It features the same scene, but in the moonlight instead of mid-afternoon sunshine. Often, we played on the ice until the sun went down and supper time would arrive after dark. Finally realizing that we were late, we would drop our sticks and head for home , a hot meal and the warmth of a country kitchen.

I painted this picture smaller than the others, only 11 inches by 14 inches. It is painted on canvas using acrylic paint.

Dreams of Glory

This is another of my series of paintings on the theme of country kids and hockey. This one gets the girls involved too. I call it "Dreams of Glory". When we were kids, it was common for the boys to dream of playing hockey in the NHL (National Hockey League) and the girls would dream of becoming Olympic figure skaters. The dog was usually happy to just live in the moment, jumping on anyone who happened to take a tumble!

This painting measures 16 X 20 inches. It is painted on stretched canvas using alkyd paint. You can tell it is a good old frosty winter day in the country by the crystal blue sky and the hoar frost on the trees. The farm house and outbuildings in the background, along with the style of clothing worn by the kids, suggests the 1940's and 1950's. My favourite part of this painting is the low sheen of the ice surface, suggested by the soft reflections and the crisp skate marks that define the surface.

Pleine Aire Painting - The Farm Next Door

Here is the finished painting of the farm next door. It measures 12 inches by 16 inches, which is a great size to work on when using a portable easel or paint box in an outdoor setting. Small enough to manage easily, yet large enough to paint freely in a fairly short period of time.

Pleine Aire Painting - The Farm Next Door

A lot of my paintings are created in the studio, from sketches, quick studies or photos. That allows me to spend as much time as I wish, working out composition, colour scheme, drawing and detail. I can pick up and also pause as the mood or situation dictates. The studio is warm in winter and cool in summer and there is never wind or rain or biting insects to dampen my enthusiasm.

That is all very positive, but in the end, it is difficult to beat the spontaneous simplicity of a painting created on the spot, in 'pleine aire', as they say.

In this case, I set up my french easle by the line fence between our farm and the farm next door. I painted for about an hour and a half, two days in a row. The scene is a small, old barn, which houses one horse and a bit of machinery. The field between was dotted with large round bales of hay which were waiting to be collected up for winter feed.

As you can see in the photos, the sun would eventually come around to a bad angle and I would finish for the day.

This is the scene that I was painting, although by the time I thought to take this photo, the large round hay bales had been removed from the field by the farmer.

The sky is not so interesting, either, having no cumulus clouds to create a dramatic background. The lack of hay bales in the field also diminishes the effect of the foreground. In the photo, the beginning autumn colours in the foliage are much less descernible than they were in reality.

When you paint out-of-doors you must work quickly and simply, in order to capture the scene before the light, mood or weather change too drastically. You must get the most important things done as quickly as you can. This forces you to be decisive and to take some chances with your approach. It is hard work but it is also very rewarding. Your confidence increases and with luck, your sense of accomplishment is much greater than it sometimes is on completion of a studio painting.

I framed this little painting and put it in a solo art exhibition several months after I painted it. It sold right away and alas, I had three separate patrons wanting it for their own.

Painting Progression-Sleigh Bells-Step 9

The final session is the most satisfying.  Everything comes together to create an inviting winter scene.  I add darks where necessary and model the snow with light and dark tones to create contour and light and shadow.  The edge of a palette knife is used to simply suggest wire on the fence posts.  White highlights are one of the last things I do and these help to guide the viewer's eye to specific areas in the painting.  I embellish the coats of the horses and add final details to the harness.  The last thing to do is add a signature!  Fini.

Painting Progression-Sleigh Bells-Step 8

Once all of the basic elements and areas have been initially painted in with alkyd paint, I begin the process of finishing each area, maintaining a harmonious relationship with the overall picture.  I begin from the sky (the most distant background) and work my way forward, adding detail, contrast and harmony.  I have embellished the light in the sky somewhat, softened the hills in the distance, and added detail to the buildings in the middle ground.  The trees on the left are painted in, providing a nice border and visual stop on that side of the picture.  I spend quite a bit of time on the trees and underbrush on the right side of the picture, deepening the green of the foliage, creating subtle shades on the snow of the branches and detail in the tangle below.  More detail is added to the snow and the roadway,  the fence posts are added and finally I spend much time painting the horses and harness and the sleigh bells from which the painting gets its name.