Tag: big sur

Redwood Creek Studies

Kevin Gleason Art

These are two studies for a new painting I’m currently working on attempting to get that enchanted feeling of being on a creek through a redwood grove, one of the most beautiful experiences I know. It’s fun to see what gouache and charcoal have to say about a subject before I work larger and speak in oil paint.

Theres’s just a week and a half until my open studio event. It will be Saturday, June 18 from 11-4 at 1128 Via Regina. I’ll have all my work out to make things easy to see. I hope to see you there!

Visual Languages

Kevin Gleason Art
Charcoal Sketch — about 6×6″

I’ve been playing around with charcoal lately… a media I haven’t really used since college. It makes me think about how if art is a form of communication, every media or material you use is like a different language. And like all languages, some are better for saying some things and others… others. Here is me sketching, speaking in two languages: Charcoal and Gouache and trying my best to say, “Don’t you love a mossy redwood canyon?”

Gouache– About 6×6″

Big Sur Paintings and Open Studio Date

Kevin Gleason Art
Rocky Coast Big Sur– 12×16″ oil on linen panel

Save the date: I’ll be putting my paintings out at an open studio event on Saturday, June 18 (Father’s Day Weekend) from 11-4 pm. I’ll post details when it gets closer and also announce it on my quarterly newsletter which you can sign up for on my website.

Here are a couple of other paintings I made when up the coast at Big Sur. It is so fun to paint the steep cliffs and fractal coastline with rocks, inlands and inlets of every size imaginable. The second painting was made up a fern-lined creek where the sunlight moves through spotlights in the redwood canopy.

Light Crossing the Creek– 16×20″ oil on linen panel

Painting Point Lobos

Kevin Gleason Art
China Cove–16×20″ oil on linen

It feels like painting a mermaid cove in Neverland here at Point Lobos. The cypress trees, sculpted rocks and sea caves, turquoise water, circuitous shoreline and sandy beaches with lounging seal pups… if people haven’t been there they’d think you were making it up. So much fun to paint!

Blue Fish Cove– 12×16″

Big Sur Impressions

Kevin Gleason Art
18×24″ oil on linen

This is painting paradise for me. It is actually so beautiful it is dangerous… big cliffs and unbelievable views combined. My knee is all skinned up from walking around on wet rocks with my eyes up on the view. The design possibilities are endless here… every few feet I want to start a new canvas.

China Cove Seals

Kevin Gleason Art7 Comments

18×36″ oil on linen– Happy Mother’s Day weekend!  Can you spot the mom and baby seal who were swimming around like real-life mermaids in China Cove last week?  Point Lobos is such an ideal landscape I felt like I was plein air painting in Neverneverland– the windblown pines, the turquoise inlets, the colorful plants clinging to the rocky cliffs… I love it.

Big Sur Coast–Morning and Sundown

Kevin Gleason Art2 Comments

 Garrapata Dawn– 8×16″ oil on panel–  This was painted on a lovely Big Sur morning.  This is by far one of the prettiest parts of the planet I’ve ever experienced.  Late Afternoon Glimmer– 6×8″ oil on panel– This small study of light on the water was painted at Limekiln State Park where I slept in the overflow site, under the bridge at the edge of the sand listening to waves roll in all night and the rain falling at one point.

Skylights in the Redwoods

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15×30″ Oil on Canvas Panel– Nothing has more beauty and mystery than a deep, fern-filled redwood grove with a playful stream meandering through.  Places like this are medicine for the spirit– my breathing slows, my shoulders drop a few notches lower and I feel completely grounded and at peace here.  My hope for the trees in these woods is that they all grow to be giants and that after they fall they are slowly and gently returned to rich soil by banana slugs and other beautiful decomposers.