August Workshop

Workshop
The Luminous Landscape
August 10-11
Tuition: 300.00
Location: China Camp, San Rafael

The practice of art can be part of our daily experience. Through this practice, we begin to realize a deeper communion with the world we live in and new ways of seeing. This 2 -day workshop is geared toward beginner/intermediate and intermediate painters, working in oil. We will discuss the importance of thumbnail sketching as an important tool for developing composition and ideas for paintings.
The primary focus will be on how to convey the sense of strong directional light in your paintings by clarifying and pushing the values. We will also work on value patterns and shapes to help in developing successful compositions. There will be discussions on materials, scene selection and brushwork. I will do a demonstration painting each day, and work with students individually on their paintings throughout the day as we paint outdoors. The workshop will be held at the historic China Camp Park in San Rafael. This small fishing village, consisting of several rustic buildings, is nestled on the edge of the bay with a backdrop of Marin's golden hills. Additional motifs include views of the bay and a small island. Limited to 15 students maximum
Hours 9-4pm

Contact Info:
Email info@johnmccormick.com or call studio at 415-924-1624

Spring Update

 Thoreau said that any day he didn't take a least four hours to walk in the woods was a wasted day. I remember reading this years ago and have since tried to apply it to continuing my daily practice of painting.  I try to paint each day either on location or in the studio. I live near an area called "horse hill" and have been taking walks there regularly for years.  There is a stable for horses below the hill and these beautiful animals roam around on the ridges all day, eating and doing horse things.
I've posted a recent horse painting and some of my new landscape paintings.  Hope you enjoy them.

Painting Workshop at Sedona Art Center  April 29th - May 3rd, 2013
I have been asked to teach a paintng workshop at the Sedona Art Center again.  The dates are April 29 to May 3rd.  Hope to see some of you there.  You can read about details concerning the class on my website or go to the Sedona Art Center Website.  Have a great day!

Fall Workshop at Sedona Art Center

Hi Everyone,  I will be teaching a five day intensive painting workshop  at the Sedona Art Center in beautiful  Sedona, Arizona.  The classes will be part of an ongoing series of workshops at the center. The date of the upcoming workshop are  October 1-5 2012 and April 29- May 3, 2013.  The workshop invites painters at all levels to immerse themselves in five days of on site and studio  landscape painting.

If you are interested in taking the workshop, check out the links below.

Here are the links to the workshops -

Fall Workshop Oct 1 – 5, 2012

Spring Workshop  Apr 29 -  May 3, 2013

March 2012 "Taking Flight"

  Living on the coast of California I have  seen hang gliders going off the hills and cliffs along the coast for many years.  As I watch them, I am reminded of mans' continuing fascination with flight and the early drawings of Leonardo and others.  Some years ago I did a painting entitled  "Night Flying".  the painting pictured here is a split plane showing an image of a man in flight under an atmospheric sky at dusk.  Below, in the split plane you see references to early Leonardo drawings and the musings of the master; a reference to art history.

I have recently decided to revisit this theme in part because I do not believe it was ever fully realized before and I want to explore it further; and because of the many layered associations with man in flight.

In the painting below entitled "Above the Pacific Light" we see the lone hang glider floating easily above the fog drenched coast.  The late afternoon light streaming across the top of the fog and hills propels  us forward into the reflective light of the distant horizon. The painting is 48x48 oil on canvas.

2011 Marin Open Studio

MARIN OPEN STUDIO

My paintings will be part of the this years Marin Open Studio.  The following is a sample of some of the smaller paintings I have put together for this event.  I hope you can stop by. Enjoy!

Saturday and Sunday May 7th and 8th and May 14th and 15th, 2010

My studio will be open from 10 am - 6 pm

The address is 20 Fairview Ave, Corte Madera, CA 94925

Studio Phone: 415-924-1624  

Cell: 415-328-2082

Directions: Tamalpais Ave, Left on Sausalito to top of hill, Left on Madrono, Left Fairview to the top of hill. Park on street, walk into cul-de-sac. Signs will be out front. Enter studio through garden gate.

                                  October Light                       12x24   oil on panel

                                 Valley of the Moon        11x14            oil on panel

                                  Red Tree, Hillside           12x12         oil on panel

                                 Pt. Reyes Afternoon #1        12x24         oil on panel

                                 January light           9x12                        oil on canvas

                                 January Farm House         9x12           oil on linen

February Light  11x 14  oil on panel

2011 Anne Loucks Gallery

2011 Exhibition - Scott White Contemporary Art

CALIFORNIA

CONTEMPORARY 

May 13 - September 3, 2011 

Opening Reception:  

Friday, May 13th 6 - 8 pm

New Work 2010

Hi Everyone,

Closing out 2010 with some new work I want to share with you.  I have sent four new works to the Julie Nester Gallery in Park City.  Two of the paintings shown here are 60x60 and reflect movement toward a slightly lighter pallet.  Additionally, I have been increasingly aware of color as a factor in my compositions and how squeezing value can help create mood and distance.

The dynamics of color use can be a daunting experience at times.  For this reason I have scaled back my range of colors at different times to see what I can glean from the a limited pallet.  After doing this for awhile I may find that the incremental introduction of new hues creates  and alters the range of color relationships for the entire work, thereby adding more atmosphere and or brilliance.

I had the good fortune recently to view a number of works by Seurat at the DeYoung museum in San Francisco.   This was part of a larger show of impressionist and post impressionist work currently on display at the museum.  While Seurat's paintings demonstrate a deep analytical understanding of color and hue relationships,  it is his conte or charcoal renderings on paper that present a masterful view of value and modulation of value  to the viewer.  In my painting entitled "Beyond the Margins"  I have explored a more subtle ;use of value and tone to create mood, atmosphere and distance.  The same study was explored in the painting "Near the Estero"  (seen below)

Lisa Harris Gallery Exhibition

In September  my work was part of a two person exhibit at the Lisa Harris Gallery in Seattle.  I have worked with Lisa for ten years and she presents my work well.   For this show I did twelve new paintings. The work  represented a slight shift in terms of color use and motif.  For several years my work has focused on wetlands and intimate settings in nature.  In the paintings, seen below, I have shifted to a larger more panoramic view.  "Above the Valley" puts the viewer in an elevated position and suggests a strong light moving across the picture plane.  The brush handling  moves up the picture plane starting with a more naturalistic rendering technique in the lower third and culminating at the top of the canvas with a loose burst of light, the brush strokes in the upper third, revealing process, paint handling and a flattening of space, as opposed to image making. This in turn presents the viewer with different levels of focus and a juxtaposition of visual language.

Bolinas Mini Show 2010

Opening on November  20th and running through to the New Year, the Bolinas Museum's mini show has become a must see.  This venue in west Marin has been an annual favorite for over twenty years.  The show features the work of several local artists.   Each work is no larger than 6x6 inches.  This year I submitted  two small paintings.  One was a study for a larger painting and the other was a new motif featuring the ever present distant hills in the area.

New Commission Paintings

The two paintings featured above are both commission pieces I recently completed.  Each painting is 36x72 inches.  The clients were both residents of the wine country area near Napa and Sonoma California, and the paintings reflect the light and feel of the area.  

Environmental Portraits

David Brower, Founder of Earth First, Sierra Club

SOLO EXHIBITION MARCH 20 - MAY 1, 2010

John McCormick
New Landscapes and Portraits

Thursday Morning               48 x 48                                 oil on linen

The painting shown above will be part of a one-man exhibition of paintings to be shown at  the Elins Eagle Smith Gallery in San Francisco.  This is the first one man show of my work in the Bay Area in three years and I am looking forward to the opening on Saturday March 20th from 2 to 4pm.  I have been working for the past year on this new body of work and am thrilled at the prospect of finally seeing it on the walls.  Included in the show will be several new landscapes and a number of portraits.  Most of you may be  familiar with my landscapes, but for this, my first show of the new decade, I decided to hang portraits of those people who have informed and inspired my thinking regarding the landscape and our environment. It is a project that will be ongoing, paying homage to and recognizing the efforts and contributions of everyone from Thoreau, and Muir, to David Brower and Robert Redford.

David Brower

Teddy Roosevelt

                          

 John Muir

Robert Redford

I look forward to seeing you at the reception on March 20th at the Elin Eagles Smith Gallery.  The gallery is located at 49 Geary St., 5th floor in San Francisco.  If you have any questions, please feel free to email me or contact the gallery directly.  The gallery phone number is 415-981-1080

SMALL TREASURES AT ELINS EAGLES-SMITH

Small Treasures at Elins Eagles-Smith Gallery, San Francisco 

February 3 – 27, 2010

John McCormick, Bolinas Lagoon, 2007

The  exhibition of “small treasures” at Elins Eagles-Smith Gallery gathers together some thirty-five works in smaller format by ten gallery artists. All of the artists in this show are well-known in the Bay Area and include Jennifer Bain, Jan Gauthier, John Goodman, Wade Hoefer, Frances McCormack, John McCormick, Timothy McDowell, Tom Monaghan, Jeanne Mullen, Kenjilo Nanao, Bob Nugent, and Gustavo Ramos Rivera. Hoefer, McCormack, Nanao and Rivera have only one piece on view, but these are noteworthy, particularly McCormack’s Stems III (2010) and Rivera’s Heartbreak (2009), a small bold abstract painting of simple red, blue, yellow and black shapes balanced against one another on a red background framed in black. The shapes themselves are reminiscent of the heart and its chambers, but more evocative than these is the energetic conversation that takes place between these balanced figures, a rhythm of pure color and abstract shapes. This looks like a throwback to Abstract Expressionism, but the freshness of the images and the direct application of the paint are refreshing and particularly appealing on a smaller scale.




My favorite pieces in this exhibition, however, are two small and intimate landscapes by John McCormick, Bolinas Lagoon (2007) and Near Stinson Beach (2007), and four pastel drawings of the same high-walled, rural building in different light and bright colors by Jeanne Mullen, from her series Montalpruno (2004). For those of us who are local Bay Area residents, who know well and love the intricacies and small beauties of the landscape along the coast near Stinson Beach and the Bolinas Lagoon, McCormick’s paintings are in fact a delightful return and visit to these locales that make such a lasting impression on our memories and sensibilities. He succeeds unequivocally in capturing the “essence of place” in each of these engaging atmospheric paintings, with sepia light aglow on the waters and in the sky, the familiar trees in stately importance, the grasses and waters lighted by the high blue sky showing in the distance.  These are, of course, squarely in the tradition of American, and in particular, California landscape painting, with intimate and familiar views of local landscapes, not necessarily famous and monumental, but regional and domestic, like Albert Bierstadt’s California Spring (1875) and his elegant and serene views of Yosemite, which do not glorify and idealize these natural beauties, but keep them accessible on an intimate human scale. McCormick’s technique and palette are also similar to some of Constable’s more atmospheric works, like his famous A Hayfield Near East Bergholt at Sunset (1812).

Mullen’s brightly colored pastel drawings of neat, clean-lined rural farm buildings—barns, sheds, and silos—are also  variations on a theme, but the changes in color and the different effects created by brilliant color combinations on the unusual architectural shapes actually produce an endless variety of interest in the patterns and pleasures of seeing. The four pastel drawings of the same rural structure from her Montalpruno series are beautifully rendered color experimentations, whereby the same building in each drawing experiences a mood change and altered state by the different colors applied to the planes, surfaces and lines of the structure. The possibilities are nearly endless, but Mullen does not wear out her theme or viewer interest by overstatement. She aptly controls the process by the simplicity of her objects and balance of pure color shapes.  In this regard, another work in this show deserves attention: Jan Gauthier’s beautifully composed portrait of another rural barn, Barn 1 (2010), a gelatin print with oil based pigment that is a rich chocolate color. 

For more information:Elins Eagles-Smith Gallery

49 Geary Street #520

San Francisco, CA 94108

415.981.1080

February 3 – 27, 2010

http://www.examiner.com/x-15746-SF-Art-Books-Examiner~y2010m2d23-Small-Treasures-at-Elins-EaglesSmith-Gallery-San-Francisco

Artist Studios featured in "The Studio Book"

Who wouldn't want a studio in the sun and by the sea? For those of us who have always dreamed of having a wonderful studio space, this book is a treasure of eclectic studios informed by the spirit, energy, and creativity of their owners. Featured here are thirty-six historical and contemporary studios that have emerged from a unique studio tradition. Ranging from serene, contemplative spaces to busy workshops, all provide inspiration and ideas for creative work spaces. Many of the studios shown have been designed by great architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright, Frank Gehry, Charles and Ray Eames, Bernard Maybeck, Julia Morgan, and A. Quincy Jones; and John McCormick, while we are not all able to call on the talents of such luminaries in the design of our own personal spaces, we are sure to benefit from the wonderfully creative studios here on display.

The book is  photographed by Melba Levick and written by Kathleen Riquelme. It is available on Amazon.

Bolinas Museum Mini Show

Teddy Roosevelt, Tree Hugger

FDR, Tree Hugger

Blue Sunset (sold)

Mid-Day  (sold)

These four paintings will be in the annual Bolinas Museum Mini Show.  This is the 21st year the museum has had this show, and this year over 85 artists created small works for the show.  This is a wonderful Holiday benefit for the museum as fifty  percent of all sales go to the museums'  general fund.  There will be artists' reception on Saturday, November 21st from 3-5pm.  For more information call the museum at 415-868-0330

 Each of the above paintings measures 6x6 inches.  Along with two of my landscapes, I've included two portraits from my "Tree Hugger" series.  The idea behind these paintings is to highlight  and bring attention to those individuals who have been important in shaping our national consciousness with regard to the natural environment.

In this day of polarized political thought, too many people see the environmentalist movement as a recent development that began on the first earth day in 1970.  Of course this event helped to calvenize people around ideas and concerns we all share regarding the health of the planet, but concern for the environment has long been part of our national character.  The writings of Jefferson, Thoreau  and Emerson shaped our thinking early on, and the development of our National Parks was part of an idea that continues to inspire and grow today in communities across the country.

The portrait of Teddy Roosevelt celebrates the President and the man who gave a big boost to the development of our National Park system.  The portrait of FDR highlights the effort this President put forward in rebuilding the National Parks (Civilian Conservation Corps) and advancing new thought regarding land use.

 I will continue to post new portraits has I finish them so stay tuned.

November 16th, 2009

New Book on Landscape Painting

Landscape Painting: Essential Concepts and Techniques for Plein Air and Studio Practice

 by Mitchell Albala

I am happy to announce the publication of Mitchell Albalas' new book, "Landscape Painting, Essential Concepts and Techniques."   Mitchell is a Seattle based artist and educator whose artwork can be seen at the Lisa Harris Gallery in Seattle.  My paintings are represented by Lisa Harris as well and Mitchell asked me if he could use one of my paintings in the section of the book that deals with composition.  The book is instructional  for all levels from beginning to advanced students  and has beautiful color reproductions.

The book can be ordered on Amazon 

John McCormick Landscape Book

The hardcover book includes McCormick’s paintings and charcoal studies done over a period between 1995 and 2001.  Essays by Susan Hillhouse, the Chief Curator of Art at The Triton Museum of Art in Santa Clara, California and Ron Glowen, an independent and nationally published art critic based in Seattle, Washington, add to the rich visual dialogue of McCormick’s work.

McCormick is a Bay area artist who has lived in California since 1971.  He is part of a group of contemporary landscape painters who combine elements of modernism with those of traditional landscape painting.   McCormick creates images from his immediate environment and from childhood memories of lakes and waterways to create works that are evocative of the mysterious and the fragile in nature. His art demonstrates a deep involvement with the craft of painting, the alchemy of rendering form, and the modulation of tone and hue.

His work is collected nationally and he is represented by galleries in San Francisco,  Los Angeles, Seattle, Montreal and Park City.  His home and studio is in Marin County, California.

To purchase this book:

Or it can be ordered  from our website under the "Prints" link  at http://www.johnmccormick.com

 Hardcover, 12”x9”, 128 pages

 76  duotone and four color images

  print run of 2000     Price  $35