Paul Wolber Art Studio

This morning as I was drinking my tea, I looked outside and saw what at first I thought was an owl sitting in the locust tree. After taking a look through the binoculars I realized it was a hawk and the blue jays were making a racket and trying to chase him away. I took my little digital camera and decided to walk out there to see how close I could get. The hawk didn’t want to go away since I suspect it was watching some prey. It did fly into the neighboring maple tree and I followed it to try to get a photo. The best I could do was a somewhat fuzzy shot and not close enough to see much detail. Through the binoculars I saw that it was a red tailed hawk so I took another shot. It soon flew away, so I went inside to do some research. With my fuzzy shot as a model, I found some photos of red tailed hawks and filled in the details. The following study is the result of my mornings work.

WHY I BEGAN TO DO SMALL PAINTINGS

I first thought seriously about doing small paintings that could be finished in a short time in order to do several each day when I was Visiting Professor of Art at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in Chongqing, China. In April of 2001 my painting class of Chinese students had taken me to Siguniang Shan, or “Four Girl’s Mountain” in Sichuan Province for a 10-day field trip. We stopped overnight at the village of Ri Long before heading for the mountain, then by horseback for three hours, and finally backpacking a couple more hours up to the plateau at the base of the mountain where we would stay for our painting outings. The village of Ri Long is at 3,160 meters and the mountain’s highest point is 6,250 meters. Our cabin was somewhere in between.

In order to show the students what I wanted them to do, I needed to demonstrate, because verbal communication was harder to accomplish since I needed to talk to them through an interpreter and words didn’t always come out the way I intended in the translation. I began to do a series of works and just let the students observe what I was doing, then they could go on to do their own work. The following posts are some of the small works derived from that time.

1. An old matriarch in the village of Ri Long. Not available for sale.

2. The cabin where my 15 students and I slept at the base of Siguniang Shan. Not available for sale.

SOLD
3. One view of “Four Girl’s Mountain”. 5" x7" acrylic on board unframed $99.00, framed $130.00

4. A dwelling in Ri Long where construction workers lived. Not available for sale.

The idea of doing small paintings again suggested itself this fall, since I’m not teaching at the University this semester and I have time to paint each day. My large scale paintings take a lot of time since I get involved in lots of detail and these paintings are usually only purchased by a museum or institution, but I wanted to do some work that friends and acquaintances could own and could have in their homes. I also like the idea that anyone could own an original work of art and could purchase it for under $100 rather than going to the supermarket and purchasing a print or reproduction for the same price or higher. It’s a very democratic concept and I like that. It could even be a good investment, since works of art increase in value based on the artists’ reputation, so small works of this kind could conceivably increase in value considerably in the future. The real reason for owning an original work of art, though, is that it brings you closer to the actual work of the artist, because you can see the brush work, the detail and the actual materials of the work than you can from a reproduction.

Now, please go to the sidebar and click on the Archives that I’ve posted thus far. I will be posting more works almost every day as I continue to finish them. I’ll later be posting some of my earlier larger scale works for those who might be interested. And I’m continuing to work on some current larger works for exhibition purposes that I’ll post from time to time.

This blog is still in-progress so please be patient with me since I’m still trying to figure out what I can and cannot do with the blog format.

Thoughts of Christmas make me think of decorating the tree. I pulled out the ornaments so here are the results of my thoughts.

Heavy Snow, 7” x 5” acrylic on gesso primed board unframed
SOLD

Ornament, 7” x 5” acrylic on board unframed $99.00, framed $130.00
SOLD

This is one of the new daily paintings I've created

Ohio Barn route 68 - 5" x 7" acrylic on gesso primed board
For current price and shipping cost send email HERE
To see all my past work on this blog click HERE.

The following painting is a swan painted from Long Lake in Michigan

Swan 2 - 5" x 7" acrylic on gesso primed board
For current price and shipping cost send email HERE
To see all my past work on this blog click HERE.

Last summer when my wife and I visited China, we visited an ancient site in the countryside in Sichuan Province where some sculptural artifacts had been unearthed. These large lion images were part of the objects that we saw there. They date from Han Dynasty approximately 200 BC.