Movie: The Jens Klinner Disruption

01 Feb Movie: The Jens Klinner Disruption

Posted from Cannes, well no, actually, our basement in Seattle, WA January 31, 2023

Disruption and Deception. Deception can be a good thing perhaps in certain complicated scenarios (think surprise parties) or when you are a Pass. Disruption is quite often a good thing, as it was most certainly when Jens Klinner, my longest-term collector, asked me to look for old paintings that had never been sold and were still rattling around the house. So instead of working on the seven paintings that I recently started, I shifted gears and looked around the house for old paintings. It’s been thrilling actually, to re-evaluate paintings that in some cases I had given up. So far, I’ve found 5 that I think will have a chance at having a constituency of one sort or another.

I’ve had such a blast I made a movie, and you can watch it here:

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72juocT4RVk

Mondrian takes up birding. Painting by Ed Newbold circa 1983. I wish I had dated this. I painted it between 1982 and 1986. It is not now quite ready for prime time, but I am directing all my painting effort in the near term toward finishing this and “Cougar leaving no tracks.” I am going to be exceedingly careful not to make alterations where they are not needed to finish the painting.

I might never have resurrected this painting if it hadn’t been for Jens. I need to get it final finished and maybe resolve just a few minor problems that I see and get a good photo of the painting taken and this will be at the stor.e in several sizes.

This is probably the oldest painting still in my possession. It’s a Pine Marten in a Bigleaf Maple forest, a little low for Pine Martens, which are creatures of the North Woods but they do come low in places. This painting suffered from my reworking at times in the 42 years I’ve been working on it (that’s 10 times longer than Da Vinci worked on the Mona Lisa, it must be good!) The painting was a bit dark in the 90s and oughts before fluroescent paints arrived to allow me to bring the light back into the painting. I put a burst of work in to it recently and I quite like it again. This painting is connected to my last memories of my father, who, as I write about in my book, taught me a lot about art and drawing although we was an Engineer by training. He came out to visit me in the summer of 1982, before I had begun selling paintings but when I was doing some really good work (Beginner’s Luck?) and picked this painting out from among the dozen I had amassed and offered the opinion that it was the best.

I had a lot of issues with this painting over the 15 years I’ve been working on it off and on, but it has proven to be a durable seller at the store in many sizes. I had several wildlife subjects in it at various times, including a small flock of Red-necked Phalaropes when I began it. I like the Harbor Seal, which is a critter you are very likely to see here, and I finally am comfortable with the paint job on the Seal.

Cougar leavaing no tracks. This is a painting I began and gave up on in the last century–1998 to be exact. I had some proportionality problems in the painting then that I have already pretty much fixed. (the light green area used to be the cougar’s body, it was too large for the head size). I am thrilled about finding this painting, thanks to Jens and I am going to have a high quality shot of it taken before I attempt to do a few small finishing changes I will be very careful not to ruin it. If my store stays in business, you can be assured this will be at the store in several sizes within a month or so.