FISHTOWN, LELAND, MICHIGAN

Fishtown, Leland, Michigan, 10 x 14 inch watercolor by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

I painted this from the rocks at the mouth of the river that runs through the oldest part of Leland on the Leelanau Peninsula north of Traverse City, Michigan.

TRIER, GERMANY

Ostallee in the Rain, Trier, Germany, 10 x 14 inch watercolor by George C. Clark    SOLD 

I painted this out of the window of a hotel room on a rainy, jet-lagged winter afternoon.  Bad weather can be as interesting to paint as good weather, although you have to find yourself a dry place to observe it from.

MY RAILROAD ART

  

16 x 12 inch Illinois Railway Museum Poster by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

 Trains were some of the first things I drew when I was a little kid.  I had electric trains-- I still have them, actually, as well as the electric trains I inherited from my father.  I have always enjoyed looking at and riding on trains, and over the years as a landscape painter I had done a number of paintings that include some railroad imagery.  Then in the late 1990s an artist friend who was teaching a summer college course in on-site painting invited me to accompany his classes to various sites around Chicago because he knew I enjoyed painting on location.  One of the places we worked was the Illinois Railway Museum in Union, Illinois.  I was quite pleased with the painting I did there, and I thought the museum offered a lot of interesting subjects to paint, so I started going there 2 or 3 times each summer with my watercolors.  My on-site railroad art enabled me to get commissions for large railroad-themed murals in hotels in Cleveland and Pittsburgh.  I gave the series a name: AGE OF IRON: Railroad Art by George C. Clark, and showed paintings from it in various exhibitions, although I have not yet done an exhibition of railroad art exclusively.

When I did an exhibition at the Vanderpoel Art Museum in Chicago in 2010 I reproduced Saddle-tank Switch Engine on both the announcement card and a 16 x 12 inch poster for the show.  I sent a poster to the Railway Museum asking them to post it for their volunteer staff to see, and the manager of the museum store called me and asked me to make a poster for the IRM with the same image for them to sell to the public.  I self-published the poster for them, and then they invited me to show framed prints of some of my railroad art in their ArtCar display space and asked me to let them sell unframed prints in the museum store.  I was happy to oblige, and that's how I became sort of an "official" artist of the Illinois Railway Museum.  I used to paint there on quiet weekday mornings, but now they want me to come on busy weekends and be an "event" for their visitors.  The last time I was there painting I had the honor of having tourists ask me to autograph prints of my art they had just purchased!

Saddle-tank Switch Engine, 14 x 10 inch watercolor by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

My original watercolor painting Saddle-tank Switch Engine is currently on display with other examples of my work at the Longbranch Gallery, 203 Commerce Street in Mineral Point, Wisconsin.

KOCHELSEE IN BAVARIA

Kochelsee in the Rain, 12 x 16 inch watercolor by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

I painted this in the front passenger seat of a rented Volkswagen Golf pulled off the road at a scenic overlook.  I had the watercolor pad on my lap and my watercolor paints deployed on the open door of the car's glove compartment.  My wife Pat took a nap in the back seat while I worked.  Normally she walks or explores while I paint, but it was raining.

TWO FROM THE GEORGIA COAST

Dune Boardwalks, Tybee Island, Georgia, 10 x 14 inch ink and watercolor by George C, Clark    AVAILABLE

Boardwalks are used to access this beach on an island near Savannah to protect the dunes and their delicate flora from erosion.  I drew this one on-site.

On the Palmetto Coast, Georgia,  12 x 16 inch ink and watercolor by George C. Clark    SOLD

I did this one later in the studio from my on-site photographs.  When we were there the sun was going down, it was suppertime, we were starving, and there was a shrimp shack nearby with its own shrimp boat docked behind it.

Update December 2012:  This painting now belongs to a private collection in Florida.

FOX VALLEY PANSIES

Fox Valley Pansies, 10 x 8 inch ink and watercolor by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

These pansies were growing in a planter on a friend's deck overlooking the Fox River in Algonquin, Illinois.

THE FARM IN DELPHI, INDIANA

The White Fence, Delphi, Indiana, 29 x 23 inch oil and pencil on paper by George C. Clark    SOLD

Another painting of the farm in Delphi.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon from Yavapai Point, 11 x 14 inch watercolor by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

I painted this in early December on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.  It was a beautiful day, but cold.  This is the only painting I have ever done wearing gloves.  The rock formation in the foreground is called "The Battleship."

TWO FROM ALDEBURGH, ENGLAND

Trawler on the Beach, Aldeburgh, 15 x 11 inch ink and watercolor by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

Some years ago my friend Lou Taylor (a fellow contributing artist in the U.S. Air Force Art Program) and I were invited to spend a week in England visiting Air Force installations there.  We stayed at the Visiting Officers Quarters on the American base at Mildenhall R.A.F. near Cambridge, and we visited three other bases in southern England.   Artists on these missions are issued orders from the Pentagon and are treated as the civilian equivalent of a full colonel.  Some Air Force trips are tightly packed with scheduled activities that leave little free time for the artists, but often, especially on longer trips, there is some discretionary time built in for the artists to do their own thing.  When that happens I am ready; I do my homework and bring a guidebook and map.  On this occasion, when our escorting officer told us that because of a British holiday we had a free day with the use of her rented car, Lou said he would like to paint some fishing boats if there were any around.  I knew he was going to say that, and I whipped out a Michelin roadmap of East Anglia and pointed out Aldeburgh,  a Victorian/Edwardian seaside resort with an active fishing fleet.  I navigated and our escort drove us there in about an hour.

Aldeburgh is a charming town that has maintained its hundred-year-old look.  It was a sunny October day, too cool for most beach activities but perfect for painting.  There is a high shingle beach, part of it reinforced with a concrete seawall, that protects the town from North Sea storms.  Fishermen haul their trawlers out of the water and winch them up paths of wooden beams like railroad ties to the top of the beach to keep them out of high waves.  I painted Trawler on the Beach on-site and researched three other paintings that I did later in the studio.  House on the Seawall is the only one of those I still have.  The house is located about 200 yards south of where I painted the trawler.

House on the Seawall, Aldeburgh,  36 x 42 inch oil on panel by George C. Clark    SOLD

Although it was late in the season, the famous fish and chips wagon on the beachfront was still open, and we had an excellent lunch.  When the counterman asked if I wanted vinegar on my chips I said yes, thinking I should have them local-style.  Then he asked if I wanted salt.  I said, "I thought you ate them with vinegar instead of salt here."  "Oh, no," he replied, "we use both."  So I did too, and they were delicious.

ENOUGH HISTORY

I have used the previous posts to tell how I came to on-site landscape painting and the steps that led me to the small-acale watercolor format I have been using for the last 30 years.  That done, I am now going to abandon any further attempts at chronology and just present my artwork, some old, some new, some sold, some available for purchase or exhibitions.  They will mostly be landscapes, but you may see the odd flower or animal or artifact from a museum, and I will include some paintings from my AGE OF IRON: Railroad Art by George C. Clark series, most of which are painted on-site at the Illinois Railway Museum in Union, Illinois.  I usually work on 10 x14 or 12 x 16 inch blocks of Arches hot press watercolor paper, but I occasionally use other papers and work larger or smaller.  Most of this work will have been painted on-site, but there are occasions when that is impossible and I have to work from my on-site photographs.  This can happen when the sun is going down, or when I have to be someplace and don't have time to paint, or when stopping to paint would inconvenience my traveling companions.  There are also times when I will do an ink drawing on-site and add color later from memory or photographs.

Backyards, Chicago, 15 x 20 inch watercolor by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

I painted Backyards, Chicago on a rainy October Sunday from the external stairway that used to lead to the second floor of my house on the Northwest Side of Chicago.  I had to stop painting several times to avoid being rained on.  My neighbors' backyards look a little different now than they did then, but Rick and Rachel's big elm tree is still going strong.

THE TRAVELER'S SKETCHBOOK WATERCOLORS

In 1976 I left my full-time commercial art job and moved to Paris for the New York Studio School summer session painting classes taught by Leland Bell and Elaine deKooning.  My wife and I sublet an apartment on the rue de Longchamps in Passy near the Trocadero, and I spent every weekday painting models in the studio or landscapes at various sites around Paris or visiting the many art museums with our instructors.  It was a great experience and I think I learned more that summer than I had in four years of art school a decade earlier.  When the session was over we planned to spend six weeks touring Europe by train.  I wanted to make more art, but I couldn't see myself lugging my bulky oil painting gear on and off trains, so I sent all that stuff home by boat mail.  Instead I bought a small portfolio with a shoulder strap and filled it with a box of Pelikan dry pan watercolors, a pad of watercolor paper, two small cups to put water in, and a green plastic French detergent bottle to carry a supply of water.  Thus began my "Traveler's Sketchbook" series of small watercolors and drawings.

Rathaus in Hamburg,  9 x 12 inch watercolor by George C. Clark    SOLD

My green French detergent bottle

I have worn out several portfolios and many boxes of watercolor paints, but I am still using that same green detergent bottle.

AN IMPORTANT BREAKTHROUGH

Ca daMula, Murano, 23 x 29 inch oil on paper painting by George C. Clark    SOLD

I had tried painting landscapes from other people's photographs with unsatisfactory results, but I was happy with the paintings I did on-site.  After a while I learned that if I went somewhere and looked at a subject with artist's eyes, deciding where I would paint from, what format of paper or canvas I would use, what elements I would include or not include in my composition, I could then walk around the site and take a series of photographs that would enable me to paint pretty much the same painting in my studio that I would have done on-site, but without having to worry about the wind knocking my easel over.  Ca daMula, Murano was researched in Italy but painted in my Chicago studio with the same high energy and spontaneity I would have brought to a work done on location with the pressure of having to paint fast before the light or weather might change.  Learning to do this was a big breakthrough for me, and it freed me to work in a much more portable medium on the road.

ANOTHER EARLY ON-SITE PAINTING

Steamboat Natchez, New Orleans, 18 x 24 inch oil & pencil on paper painting  by George C. Clark    SOLD

I spent a morning painting this on the bank of the Mississippi.  A couple from California watched me work for a while, then asked if the painting was for sale.  I said it would be, but not until the oil paint had dried and I made some little adjustments in the studio and let the adjustments dry.  I offered to mail them a slide of the finished painting.  I did that and the wife contacted me and bought the painting as a surprise birthday gift for her husband.

THE FIRST LANDSCAPE PAINTING I SOLD

Lobstermen's Dock, Boothbay Harbor, Maine, 20 x 28 inch oil, oil crayon, and pencil painting on paper by George C. Clark  SOLD

When I first started painting landscapes I had to lug my oil painting gear with me and I could only paint on site.  I painted this from the balcony of a hotel built on a pier in Boothbay Harbor.  The Maine coast was everything an artist could want: beautiful, foggy and atmospheric at times, with centuries-old towns.  This was the first landscape painting I sold at the Art Rental and Sales Gallery of the Art Institute of Chicago, back in the days when the museum was still supporting and exhibiting local artists.

ANOTHER EARLY FARM PAINTING

Thirty Thousand Chickens, 29 x 22 inch oil & pencil on paper painting by George C. Clark  SOLD

The day after I painted Hog Pens (see previous post) it rained, so I had my wife's uncle lock me in a long building with 30,000 egg-laying chickens and a cat, where I made this painting.  That many chickens make a hell of a lot of noise.  The cat wouldn't pose for me, so I photographed him and painted him in later.

HOW IT STARTED

In the 1970s I was working as an art director in advertising, and the only fine art I was doing were life drawings at an evening workshop organized by some fellow admen.  My artist friend Marilyn Packer told me that the Art Rental and Sales Gallery of the Art Institute of Chicago was holding its annual jury for new artists and she suggested I enter something.  I submitted three of my figure drawings, and one, an oil and pencil on paper seminude of a young lady, was accepted.  It was a real thrill for a young artist to see my work on the wall of the Art Institute, even if it was in the basement, and it was an even bigger thrill a few weeks later to receive a check because the drawing had sold.  When I told Marilyn what had happened she congratulated me and told me I was very fortunate, because they rarely accept figures and hardly ever nudes, most of their clients being corporate types looking to buy or rent art to decorate their offices.  I realized she was right because my drawing had been one of very few figurative pieces in the gallery and the only one featuring bare skin.
I was eligible now to submit new work three times a year at the gallery, and I wondered if it was wise to tempt fate by continuing to submit art in the genre least likely to be accepted.  After all, my painting idols Lovis Corinth, Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt, and Paul Hogarth all painted both figures and landscapes.  I could too.

Hog Pens, 28 x 22 inch oil & pencil on paper painting by George C. Clark

Over Labor Day weekend we went to my wife's aunt and uncle's farm in Delphi, Indiana and I brought my painting gear.  I did four on-site paintings, and Hog Pens was the first.  Three of them were eventually accepted at the Art Rental and Sales Gallery.  Hog Pens didn't sell there, but Chicago gallerist Joy Horwich later sold it to a commodities trader whose specialty was pork bellies.