Capturing the Beauty and Character of Trees with Tom Norton’s Walnut Drawing Ink: An Artist's Product-Review

           One of my favorite fluid art-media that I have been using for several years is Tom Norton’s Walnut Drawing Ink.  The first time that I used this ink I was immediately inspired by the possibilities of the media.

 

"View Through Graceful Branches", by Linda L. Anderson. Acrylic and Tom Norton's Walnut Ink.

            I am very attentive to the marriage between my subject matter and the media I use to express my creative response to subject and theme. The wooded landscape and portraits of trees are among my primary subjects—and Tom Norton’s Drawing Ink is ideal for the manner that I portray this subject matter.  The earthy browns of the ink allows me to create paintings that have a natural timeless quality—as well as a contemporary feel.

 

"Along the Skyline", by Linda L. Anderson. Acrylic and Tom Norton's Walnut Ink.

            I also appreciate how well the ink mixes with other water media.  I often create subtle shifts of temperature and chroma through inter-layering or mixing other water-media during the painting process.  By adding a small quantity of black India Ink I can create cooler shades within my ink washes.  These cooler notes complement the warmer-range washes I can achieve with Tom Norton Walnut Ink. 

"Between Silent Junctures" by Linda L. Anderson. Tom Norton's Drawing Ink.

I can also increase the richness and opacity of the ink washes through layering one wash on top of a previous dried layer, as well as through adding a small quantity of brown-tone, or golden-tone watercolor paint into the walnut ink. I often do this to create warmer mixtures and washes.  

I use the sepia-toned ink as a painting media—similar to watercolor; layering my ink-washes to achieve a variety of values and textures.  The rich browns that I can achieve with Norton’s Drawing Ink are ideal for the mood and aesthetic characteristic that I seek to create in each of my walnut and mixed-media paintings that form my “Umber Woods” series.  Several of my Walnut Ink paintings have been the impetus to create a larger, mixed-media composition that integrated the walnut ink painting as a featured part of the larger design of the composition.

I am excited to learn that Tom Norton now makes a Darkening Medium that increases the density of the ink.  

( NOTE: You may view additional examples of my walnut ink paintings that form my "Umber Woods" Collection.  View these works at http://www.lindalandersonfineart.com )

                                                                               Linda L. Anderson, MFA.

ARTIST''S NOTES: Artist's Who have Inspired my Work--Featuring Auguste Rodin

Yesterday I had the wonderful opportunity to experience the exhibition, "Rodin: Evolution of a Genius".  The exhibit, at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, in Richmond, VA.,  features 200 works of the great French sculptor.  Whenever I have the opportunity to view a collection of Rodin's sculpture, I am rewarded with new inspiration for my own art and creative processes.  In addition to viewing this exhibit of Rodin's art, I have been fortunate to have visited the Musee Rodin in Paris; and to have attended another exhibit of the artist's sculpture, several years back, at the Dayton Art Institute, in Ohio. 

This exhibit highlighted the working methods of Rodin and detailed how the artist was ever creating new compositions by recombining parts of previous works.  In essence, Rodin's manner of working was organic.  The creative process was ongoing as new forms inspired and often were physically recombined to give birth to new creative form.

Rodin's manner of working in this way has directly inspired my working methods--even though I primarily work with the 2-dimensional art-forms, such as paintings, prints, and drawings. I do not consider works "finished".  While I do bring them to a state of resolution--I leave open the possibility that the work may be given a new aesthetic life through alteration, or by its being integrated (in part or whole) into an emerging composition.

The artist's expressive treatment of the figure has also provided the inspiration for several of my prints and mixed-media works created for "The Book of Eve: Songs of the Spirit, Hymns of the Flesh", (which is my hand-illuminated manuscript of my poetry). One of Rodin's works that inspired my art is the sculpture, "Meditation".  This work actually inspired two of the artworks for the pages of "The Book of Eve".
  

The mixed-media illumination (that is the featured artwork on the inside cover page of my volume of poetry) is one of the illuminations that were inspired by Rodin's "Meditation". To create this artwork, I had my daughter pose in a manner similar to Rodin's sculpture. For the second artwork that was inspired by "Meditation", I worked with the spirit of the pose of Rodin's sculpture--and placed the figure in a landscape setting.

 I composed the landscape features in such a manner that the dynamic curve of the figure is counterbalanced by the vertical support of the line of the upright tree; and harmonized with the upward curve of the horizontal tree.  Just as Rodin worked with the interchange between the figurative forms, and the inter-spaces (or the open spaces between and surrounding forms), this design of my composition creates a unity between figure and ground.  The rhythmic inter-play between positive form and the spaces between provides a sculptural dimension to the drawing.

Artist's Notes: Art and the Texture and Depth of Experience

Experiential Realism—Honoring the Texture of Lived Experience

With varied marks, pigments and textures, I build up the material  quality of the dimensional surfaces of my paintings and ceramic sculptures. In addition to the actual layers comprising the works, there is a layering of processes and a combining of media that contribute to the totality of each piece.  I love the tactility of surfaces that invite me to touch, to explore, and to consider the manner that each of the elements have become unified to contribute to the feeling quality of the whole.  

"Autumn Gesture: Leaf Passage II" by Linda L. Anderson. 30" x 40" $3,560

Textures are evidence of material events and substances intersecting throughout the medium of time, and have the potential to connect us to a deeper reality.

Both photos: "Fire-Formed" by Linda L. Anderson. Ceramic sculpture inspired by the beautiful traces of geological history.  Hand-built ceramic, with raku glaze, copper gilding and applied pigments; inclusions of copper specimens. My sculpture is on a slate base with natural patina and fossil imprint of a fern.

The highly textured aspects of my compositions reference my interest in the inter-relationship between what is visible to us, and what is beyond the perceptual field of our senses. Part of the deeper reality of life and experience that my art is connected with is that of deep history. 

I am intrigued by the trace of time upon the surface layers of Earth as it is altered by way of history, geological events and natural cycles.  

Two additional perspectives of my ceramic sculpture,"Fire-Formed", by Linda L. Anderson.

Changes occur undetected beneath the surfaces of our contemporary cultures. I may or may not be aware of the unseen changes influencing the outermost facets of material reality.  And I may not always actively consider how human actions are part of this deeper reality.  But in its tactile, layered qualities, my art does connect with the truth that human activity—inclusive of both creative and destructive acts—often is the catalyst of additional changes of appearances and functions of material forms.  

"Aurum" by Linda L. Anderson. Hand-built ceramic, with raku glaze and mineral specimen.

So I create with an awareness of the dynamic interaction between interior and exterior forces in our lives. This consideration of the interchanges and intersections between material and non-material energies underlies my approach to the creative process and contributes to the inherent feel and aesthetic quality of my artwork.  

"Opening to the Secrets of Stones", by Linda L. Anderson. 24" x 30" SOLD

My activity to bring forth the final—or most recent and visible—surface of each work involves cycles of creative destruction occurring through the over-layering of initial and intermediary layers with new passages of color, textures, tones and materials upon the substrate. In truth, there is, throughout the process of bringing forth a new work— the re-creation of many of the initial strata of marks and materials, and a placing of these in new relationships. 

The new relationships, as they evolve and are made visible are experienced as meaningful because of the interconnections between each of the parts contributing to the evolved composition. And this manner of working occurs throughout the creative process. 

I have learned to proceed without fear to honor the entire process of creating my art—even while knowing that whole passages of imagery, marks and color will be subsumed in the very act of allowing for the emergence of what is to become the most visible layers of the composition. 

"August Patina: Changing Light" by Linda L. Anderson. 22" x 28" $1,940

By relinquishing the need for creating a perfect surface that is identifiably finished, I feel that my work communes with the deeper and meaningful aspects of reality.  

Often I experience my art as open compositions—perhaps having achieved a state of harmonious interplay between the pictorial or dimensional elements—yet ever holding the possibility for additional changes, or cycles of creation.  

Peering into the central depths and textures of my hand-built ceramic: "Fire-Formed".

And as I continue to discover additional avenues to experience the inherent qualities of the artwork that is ever coming into being, I am intrigued to allow change to leave it traces, with the hope that others will share in my creative experiences and discover meaning therein.

Entering into "deep history", Ithaca, New York

Along the Appalachian Trail: Meditations and Poetic Passages

 Within the Landscape: The Transformational Stillness of the Moment

The warm air and sunlight of the day invited me to set aside my busy work and to step outside of my daily routine to allow myself to remember what it feels like to belong to the living world.  As an artist whose works are rooted in my firsthand experiences of nature, I realize that it is vital to my work and to my being that I frequently reconnect with the natural world. 

And so today, my companion and I set out to explore and enjoy a stretch of the Appalachian Trail that is but a short journey eastward from our town of Front Royal, Virginia.

As we stepped away from our vehicle we walked softly towards the trail marker and towards the entry-point to the path we would walk and pause along on this day of radiant sunlight and invigorating freshness.  And at this point of entry, I entered into this experience with a total openness to the moment—and a yearning to touch nature, and be touched in return.

Encircled by beauty--along the Appalachian Trail. March 1, 2012.

And because I accepted the invitation to journey out into the landscape, I was rewarded by an experience that restored me to a sense of wholeness. During the hours my companion and I walked along the Appalachian trail, I came to remember my body in relationship with earth and sky—and the variety of flora and fauna that make a home upon the ground beneath our feet, as well as the life that moves through the air that envelopes us while it also opens upwards in atmospheric veils of light and color.  

While allowing my senses to connect with my surroundings, my sense of child-like wonder and curiosity awakened.  And I began to remember.  

One of my drawings of the landscape, in an early stage of development.

As before, during other experiences of going out into the wooded landscape in early March, I remembered the feeling and energy of the Earth just before spring—how the moisture-softened ground beneath our feet yields to the imprints of change will that allow new life to come forth.

Perhaps it was my awareness of how my feet seemed to meld with the pliable soil as I walked, or perhaps it was the manner that my skin responded to the vigorous breeze that animated the surrounding landscape—but my sense of touch was heightened to the point where I could feel the textures of stone and moss, of matted grasses and fissured bark of trees as if my hand were actually touching these surfaces.

As I glanced around for a place to pause and draw my surroundings, the sculptural forms of the extending roots of a particularly large tree looked as if they would embrace me in the desired moments of solace and meditation. And so I sat there, nestled within the spread of the tree roots for a spell; entranced by the stillness of the moment. And I began to draw—not to produce a finished drawing—but to explore and to understand the relationships between myself and all that I was experiencing in this moment of connection.  I have learned that drawing while within the landscape focuses my meditative awareness, and allows me to feel the fullness of the inter-relationships between all that I perceive both before me—and within me.

"Natural History" by Linda L. Anderson. 30" x 40" Acrylic on Canvas and Fabric, with original Serigraph Print

My companion had his camera as his creative medium of connection with the forms, shapes, textures and lines of nature.  All was in harmony as we each attuned both our outer vision and inward vision to this place in nature, and to this experience.

Suspended within this stretch of time wherein I responded to the surrounding environment with pencil moving over the surface of paper, I realized a sense of being completely centered in the moment.  And from this center, the energies of life moved through the stillness of my own being—flowing—even as the air moved around and over the silent surfaces of ancient stones.

And from this center of stillness I remembered the beauty of stream waters alive with the energy of fluidity and change. And I remembered the beauty of the sky uplifting me to a sense of openness and movement, while I also remembered that comforting sense of being a part of the beauty of the earth that nurtures the patient energy of deep life—seeds, roots and crystalline formations—at its source   

And in such meditative moment of remembering and connection, I fully experience myself as being whole.  

   

"We should be impressed by the beauty and fragility of the dynamic balance that has been preserved for so many hundreds of millions of years during which life has persisted on earth.  And we should especially appreciate the shortness of our tenure on earth and use the powers we have so recently assumed to perpetuate, not destroy, the balance."  ~Eliot Porter~ in Appalachian Wilderness: The Great Smokey Mountains  Natural and Human History by Edward Abbey, with the photographs of Eliot Porter, 

and Epilogue by Harry M. Caudill. c.1973 Ballantine Books, New York.

SHARING THE INSPIRATION: My Artist Notes on the "Dimensional Landscapes" Collection

An Invitation to Experience a New Dimension in Landscape Painting . . .

The collection of artworks I designate as “Dimensional Landscapes” were inspire by my desire to create artwork that people feel as if they could enter into the full experience of all that is within and upon the canvas.

"Elemental Fugue: Earth Cycles" by Linda L. Anderson. 36" x 48" $4,760

 

To achieve my goal, I thought about the manner that I experience an actual landscape environment.  I also considered how the perceptive body enters into an experiential relationship with the breadth and depth of space as it is in perpetual interaction with material form. I meditated upon the manner that the continuum of time and the force of change also contribute to the manner that we interact with a natural environment--and indeed, our World. And I thought of how light is a transformational element that acts as an agent of (and in this series) a visible symbol of life in dynamic flux.  As light radiates outward through open-air space to intersect, define, and reveal qualities of form, we too are included in this natural drama. 

"Winter Woods" by Linda L. Anderson. 36" x 24" Oil on Canvas.  While this painting preceded the creation of my "Dimensional Landscapes" collection, and is therefore, not part of that collection, there are connections between the works, and in my manner of perceiving and painting the landscape.

I allowed this understanding to inform the manner that I would compose each work in my new landscape series of paintings. 

When we enter into a forest or walk through the garden, we enter into a relationship with the natural environment with our whole person.  We do not stand outside of this space as a mere observer—but instead, become a full participant.  Our experience is layered and inclusive of all of our senses, as well as our feelings and imagination.  

"Alchemy: Eastern Birches in Silver and Gold" by Linda L. Anderson. 24" x 48" $3,680

With this realization, I then set out to combine the elements of composition—line, color, texture and form—in such a manner that the resulting paintings were experienced as an inclusive aesthetic environment.  I also thought of the manner that forms in space, and light are experienced in relationship to the manner that we move through and around elements in the landscape.  This is how this series of works was born.

Detail view of "Elemental Fugue: Earth Cycles" by Linda L. Anderson.  This mixed-media painting includes layers of several of my silkscreen prints, and is one of the unique "Dimensional Landscapes" in that it also includes one of my black and white photographs--that inspired the prints. 

My “Dimensional Landscapes” are mixed-media paintings on canvas (and sometimes, wood panels) with elements of natural materials included, as well as layered paper that influence the surface qualities of these paintings.. 

In total, these layered textures of paint, plant fibers and other materials contribute to the tactile and light-responsive surfaces of the paintings, that I find to be inviting to the senses. As I am both a painter and a print-maker, many of the works also integrate original prints, drawings and smaller paintings into the larger whole.   

"August Patina" by Linda L. Anderson. 22" x 28" $ 1,940

These inclusions provide the means for me to create simultaneous visual pathways of entrance into the compositions, and to invite meditative interaction of these views of earth-forms, sky-patterns, water-rhythms and flora-textures.

Follow me on this creative journey of exploring new dimensions in painting the landscape. Return often to see new works in this collection--and more art, beauty and insights. 

AN INVITATION: Follow, and see what's coming to Linda L. Anderson Fine Art

COMING SOON: A  full-page gallery of my "Dimensional Landscapes" collection . . .

"Along the Horizon" (9" x 12" Acrylic on Canvas and Acrylic on Paper) is one of my newest works in the collection, "Intimate Dimensions of Earth and Sky".  $475.

I invite you to return often for more art and inspiration. 
                                                               ~Linda L. Anderson~

ART LESSONS: Drawing and Painting the Intimate Dimensions of the Landscape

Discovering Natural Beauty in Your Own Back Yard:

Intimate Dimensions of Drawing and Painting

For those who enjoy going out into the landscape to commune with the natural world and to experience the beauty in nature that soothes and re-invigorates the soul, like me, you might have a special appreciation for natural areas and preserves that are part of our local, state and national parks.  

"Geometry of Light" by Linda L. Anderson. 20" x 30" Mixed Water-Media on Paper. My paintings, prints and drawings are inspired by my direct experiences and connections with the natural world.

Autumn view of the Shenandoah River at the "Andy Guest" Shenandoah River State Park.

I am blessed to live in the Shenandoah Valley of Northern Virginia—where there are several state and national parks, and other unique areas of natural beauty—such as the crystal Caverns of Luray, Skyline Caverns and the Shenandoah Caverns.  People come from all of the corners of our nation—and even from outside of the United States to experience the mountains, valleys and trees of this region.

The natural beauty and wonders of the Shenandoah Valley and surrounding mountain chains is found below ground and above ground. Photo: Amazing sculptural form is in abundance at Luray Caverns.

I have had several occasions to enjoy the forested and mountain-framed wonders of the area.  One of my favorite locations is the Shenandoah River State Park— a landscape that I find especially beautiful in the autumn. And I have found inspiration for several of my “Dimensional Landscapes” in connection with trekking through the old growth forests of the George Washington National Forest, and during a memorable journey southward, along the Blue Ridge Mountains, from Front Royal, Virginia to Asheville, North Carolina.

Enjoying the simple pleasures nature offers: At the North Carolina Arboretum near Asheville, North Carolina.

There is an amazing variety of nature’s beauty on a grand scale all along these mountainous valleys. And there is no end to the sources of inspiration for my landscape paintings—which are born in these moments of directly connecting to the spirit of this land.

While I truly enjoy all that these parks and areas of natural history and beauty offer, I know there is an equally wondrous and inspiring beauty in the familiar landscapes that we inhabit. These landscapes are always available for us to step into and to enjoy.

Beautiful rhythms, lines and textures inspire artistic activities within footsteps the front boor.

When I was a young girl, I loved going into the back garden to explore the trees and flowers my father had planted, and to lie back in the grass and let my imagination join the changing configurations of cloud patterns in the sky.  It was these early moments of connection with the natural world that are the living roots of my art that celebrates the beauty of nature.

View of the back garden: Red-buds and Pines in early Spring. Front Royal, VA

Even now, I appreciate the familiar landscapes of home and community.  As an artist, I enjoy strolling out into the garden or community park.  It is a fulfilling experience to explore beauty and to respond to these intimate environments with art materials in-hand.  In these moments of appreciating the aesthetic variety in my own back yard, I have found treasures of solace and wonder.

Moon rising through the trees: Front Royal, VA

"December in Moonlight" by Linda L. Anderson. 48" x 36" Acrylic on Canvas and Original Intaglio Prints on Paper. $5,580