MEIJER GARDEN POND, GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN

Meijer Garden Pond, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 9.5 x 9.5 inches ink, watercolor & colored pencil    AVAILABLE

I drew this water feature at the Meijer Gardens during a visit to Grand Rapids in October.  The bright green stuff floating at the edge of the water is duckweed

THE OXBOW INN, SAUGATUCK, MICHIGAN

Oxbow Inn, Saugatuck, Michigan, 29 x 40 inch oil and pencil on paper painting by George C. Clark   AVAILABLE

Oxbow 1946, photo by Life Magazine photographer Loomis Dean

I painted the Oxbow Inn on-site in the 1980s while attending a week-long workshop at the Summer School of Art there conducted there by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  It is the original structure of the famous art colony, having been constructed in the 19th century to house lumberjacks harvesting Michigan's old-growth forests.  It is now the headquarters of the school with student housing upstairs and gallery and lounge space and the kitchen downstairs.  Meals are eaten on the big verandas that surround part of the building.  There are a number of newer outbuildings that house studios and workspaces for various media, but I found the Inn the most interesting to paint.

The morning I started this painting was overcast, with the sky dark and threatening rain.  Most artists show the front of the building, where a wide veranda faces a lawn leading down to Oxbow Lagoon.  I preferred to paint the side of the building where I could show the white structure with a big dark forested dune looming over it, so I set up by the road where the cars are parked in the photo.  I liked the details in the foreground-- the propane canisters, the garbage cans, and especially the yellow duck whirly-gig.  While I was working, one of the kitchen workers came out to take a break, so I painted her in, too.  This is a case where a painting can be truer than a photograph.  To get a camera back far enough to include this whole facade you would have to tear down a couple of outbuildings and a bunch of trees.  

I found the 1946 photo online.  The truck is parked down by the shore of the Lagoon.  We painted models outdoors too, but mostly in a garden adjacent to the Inn.  The dune in the upper right of the photo is the one in the background of my painting.   

OXBOW, SAUGATUCK, MICHIGAN

Oxbow Coke Machine, Saugatuck, Michigan, 24 x 20 inch pencil drawing by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

Several times I have been to the summer art workshops at the old artists' colony Oxbow, which now belongs to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, my alma mater.  It occupies the site of a 19th Century lumbering camp around an oxbow lake near Saugatuck, Michigan.  I did this drawing there of one of the outbuildings and a gnarly old pine tree back in the days when carbonated drinks were vended in glass bottles.

SNAILSHELL HARBOR ON LAKE MICHIGAN

Snailshell Harbor, Fayette State Park, Michigan, 12 x 16 inch watercolor bt George C. Clark    SOLD

I painted this harbor scene in Fayette State Park on the Lake Michigan shore of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

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.