Neil Kathol Visual Art

Painted on a windy, sandy beach near Bend, Oregon. Below this text is a “Paint From”, Painting. Explanation: the plein air painter’s pallette consists of little piles of paint. Most piles are colours mixed for making the picture (which mainly emulate what I think I am seeing for colour). There are also little right-out-of-the-tube piles, and some little piles of miss-mixed paint (sometimes the mix is such a failure I just leave it, hoping it may be a base for something else). When the picture is done, these paint piles still exist; and are beautiful in their own right (and “hard-earned” in some cases). I take a pallette knife and spread this extra paint on that other support. “Wasting the pallette, I call it. The outcomes are often as interesting to me as the painting. I also like the concept of making paint piles particularly mixed ones, and redirecting their use away from the purpose for which they were carefully mixed. And I like being worn-out from the plein air painting effort and at that lower energy level still focused on getting a simpler job done. Some choices are occurring, but mainly I am still working away, not distracted, but not “thinking” in the usual meaning of that word.