Oils and Acrylics
Aglint ©Kesler Woodward 2024 Acrylic on Canvas 36″ x 48″
As I’ve said in this space many times, I never know (or even think about) what I’m going to paint next until I finish a painting and am about to start a new one. I never, ever work on more than one painting at a time, and while I’m working on that painting, it’s all I can think about. When it’s finished, it goes on the studio wall out of the way. As I put up a new canvas, I start to ponder what I want to paint next, and at the same time, whether I want to work in acrylics or oils. For me, paintings that are about light, like this one, seem to need to be in acrylic, so that the light can pass through the transparent pigment, bounce off the pure white of the primed canvas, and return to the viewer’s eye almost as if backlit.
Aglint was painted in the last days of winter, as the glorious light of the long season of cold was just beginning to change to the burgeoning light of spring. I’m always excited that the days are growing longer, of course, but I always want to cling just a little longer to the crisp snow on the branches in the forest and the magical light that fills the winter woods.
Brothers ©Kesler Woodward 2024 Oil on Canvas 20″ x 16″
The birch portraits, by contrast, often seem to want the richer, fleshier sensuality of oils. As I walk out my door, I greet the birches which I pass by every day like old friends, noting the way the shifting light brings out their individual colors and the way they change as they age, season by season and year by year. And as we walk or run on the endless trails through the surrounding forest, I invariably spot new ones, wondering why I hadn’t noticed this one or that one before.
The woods are dense with these tall, thin trunks. I can almost never see a single tree in its entirety, in isolation. I always feel like I’m greeting new ones face-to-face, and so I seem to always paint them eye-to-eye.
Taiga Birch ©Kesler Woodward 2024 Oil on Canvas 20″ x 10″
A New Exhibition and New Paintings in Oils
Three Graces ©Kesler Woodward 2024 Oil on Canvas 36″ x 48″
I have just returned from Reno, Nevada, where my latest solo exhibition of 16 new paintings opened with a terrific reception at Stremmel Gallery on February 8. I am so grateful to be able to show my work in that big, beautiful, museum-like space, and to have my work represented by the outstanding and supportive people there. A number of paintings in the exhibition have already been claimed by collectors, but the full exhibition will be up through March 9. You can see the gallery’s online catalog of the exhibition here.
Since shipping the last paintings for that exhibition more than a month ago, I have of course been back in the studio and hard at work. I go back and forth, over the years, between painting in acrylics and painting in oils, and for the first time in almost a decade, I’ve started working again in oils. For the last month I’ve been coming in from the studio late every night, saying to Dorli, “I’d almost forgotten what a joy it is to push thick, sensual oil paint around on large canvases. I’m having such a good time!”
I’ve painted “birch portraits” like these for more than forty years, continually amazed by the variety and beauty of these trees as I walk and run the trails of the boreal forest. I paint other subjects–mountains, skies, the light of dawn and dusk, and more–but sooner or later I always return to these beautiful trees. They have long taken the place of people in my paintings—in their individuality, their strength, their vulnerability…in the way what happens to them in their lives is written in their “skin.”
Olden Dances ©Kesler Woodward 2024 Oil on Canvas 48″ x 60″
But I also love the other trees in the northern forest–spruces, larches, poplars, and especially the aspens that are as plentiful as the birches surrounding our home. Many people here think of all the trees in our local forest, and all the trees in my paintings, as birches. But comparing this big (4 ft. x 5 ft.) painting of bold aspen trunks, Olden Dances, with the slender birches of Three Graces speaks directly, I think, to the quite different character of these mainstays of the boreal forest.
The leaves of aspens, which the ancients called “Whispering Trees,” tremble in our summer winds, and their tall trunks sway gently, dance slowly, even in the near-total calm of our long winters. I think they are dreaming of the coming spring.
Cloths of Heaven ©Kesler Woodward 2023-24 Oil on Canvas 48″ x 60″
Solo Exhibition at Stremmel Gallery in Reno, NV – Opening February 8
My second solo show at Stremmel Gallery in Reno, Nevada opens this Thursday night, February 8. If you are anywhere near Reno this week, please stop by and say hello at the opening reception!
For more info on the exhibition, and to see a full online catalog of the 16 paintings, click on this link:
Following the North Star – Paintings by Kesler Woodward
Or you can go directly to the online catalog here!
Kesler Woodward 