Watercolors — Iskra Fine Art

Northwest Mystic Summer

July 21, 2019 by Iskra Leave a Comment

Lummi Blues, archival pigment print by Iskra

Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste.

It’s what everything else isn’t.

–Theodore Roethke

Greetings from the Pacific Northwest summer, which arrived a few hours ago, sneaking in with a sun hat and a good book while the rest of the country fries in humid torment. A bit late, but divine. It’s hard to stay in the studio when the garden calls, begging me to count the lily pads and swoon in the golden light of the locust tree.

Yet, here I am, indoors, attempting to translate the outdoors after recent travels in landscape. The new work for SAM Gallery’s November show “Artists Influenced by Asia,” is directly influenced by the immediacy of nature here along the Salish Sea. A few weeks ago I went up to Samish Island with two dear friends, painters Chris Gedye and Patty Haller to see Patty’s new studio. It was complete bliss. We woke up in the morning to low tide’s iridescence, herons perched sentinel along the sand and wind stirring the branches of trees along the bluff. Off to the west was an island I’ve never seen from this perspective: [Read more…]

Save the Date for Colorbath! Iskra at Taste | SAM

July 9, 2018 by Iskra Leave a Comment

The Harbor Iskra at Taste Restuarant at SAM — “Harbor Morning,” mixed media archival pigment print, 36 x 36″ © Iskra Johnson

Summer, finally! I’ve been immersed for months in new ways of looking at color and light, and finally what I have been seeing in my minds’ eye has unfurled in front of me. What turns a mere boat into a “vessel” is the fleeting moment of refraction. In my spring wanderings through freezing shipyards that light was not always easy to find. Often I would return home from Salmon Bay and Harbor Island with hundreds of classic northwest gray-green photographs, all cast in the steely gaze of cloudcover. Occasionally a well-honed wind would scrape the sky, leaving blue shards on the water and astonishing bits of gold. One evening iridescent swallows flew through from the bridge. Two raptors shrieked courtship from the highest masts, offering what seemed like a lovers’ benediction.

The Golden Rope Photography by Iskra The Wrapped Ship photograph by Iskra Composition with Sail maritime photograph by Iskra

Journal Entry: The shipyard on Sunday. Men playing guitars on derelict balconies, men riding yellow bikes, men rising shirtless and surprised from the hulls of tugboats unshaven and lurching but still afloat. The wooden planks, the seams of trees that run out into the waves parallel, almost indistinguishable. Then the five alarm fire of a red buoy hanging off the Maudie Mae and its shadow and the starburst within the shadow.

Inspiration photos from Salmon Bay.

As a photo-based printmaker I start with the camera. The photograph is the diving platform. From that reality-based ledge I go into a world of improvisation, working with layers of paint to create a completely new world. Colorbath goes farther into abstraction and paint than I have gone before, and opens up exciting new directions for the future.

Please mark your calendar for Thursday August 9th and join me for a reception for Colorbath, from 6-7:30 at Taste Restaurant, Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101. I will have nine new large works ranging in size from 30 x 30″ to 30 x 40″. They will be posted for preview on the SAM Gallery site and in my portfolios soon.

Blue Buoys detail Iskra at Taste “Blue Buoys” (section), © Iskra Johnson

Postscript:

I was a lake swimmer for years. I fell in love with my first tugboat when I was 17 and stayed up 24 hours listening to Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert while looking at rust and tires on the Duwamish. Some of the people who actually spend their lives working on boats feel the same way. If you have an hour or two to get lost at sea visit these folks at Maritime Family. All I can say is WOW.

Meditation on the Winter Solstice, 2015

December 22, 2015 by Iskra 3 Comments

Winter Solstice, 2015

“I shut my eyes in order to see.”— Gauguin

The-Pale-House — The Pale House, printing ink on paper, © Iskra Johnson

There are structures designed to withstand earthquakes and there are structures built to slowly decay. These are scaffolds of membranes that melt under rain and light until the wind can blow through, rocking them lightly back and forth. The seed, meant to escape, might remain for years, seemingly weightless, but weight enough to keep the structure anchored. Time moves around it.

I lived for awhile, many years ago, in a former Catholic monastery. The light that came in through stained glass and wooden shutters filled the rooms with rare colors and a sense that every moment within had been granted or won. In this domain I couldn’t make a cup of tea without a sense of ceremony. In the morning I would choose a cup, pour boiling water through a silver weir and thick black leaves, and settle with my Earl Grey on the back stairs behind the kitchen. There I could sit and watch the world awaken through the steam of bergamot. [Read more…]

Tom Hoffmann’s New Book on Watercolor Painting

November 29, 2012 by Iskra Leave a Comment

I was thrilled today to receive my copy of Tom Hoffmann’s new book on watercolor, “Watercolor Painting: A Comprehensive Approach to Mastering the Medium,” just out from Watson Guptill. You may know Hoffmann as a painter of incandescent skies and inimitable backstreets, an artist who takes “the unpaintable” and transforms it– he can make the most ordinary extraordinary. Over the course of his career his work has moved through many phases, but always it holds an indelible signature. His paintings are about paint and how it wants to be, combined with wonderful leaps of reduction and abstraction. His best work captures the air and the time of “place”, with a haunting sense of both immediacy and reverie.

This new book provides a valuable and fresh approach to understanding the medium. It’s a big picture view that will fill in what is missing from the volumes that teach you how to render kitten fur or use frisket to paint birch trees in the snow. (Not that these techniques aren’t valuable for any painter’s repertoire……) I am happy to be included in the book with a study for “From One Tree.”

From One Tree Botanical Watercolor Study — “From One Tree” watercolor of laurel leaves on hotpress Fabriano © Iskra Johnson

Hoffmann’s is the latest in a series of truly fine books written by instructors at Seattle’s Gage Academy of Art. Collectively they are setting a new standard for instructional books, many of which are becoming best sellers in their area of expertise. A list of other books by Gage instructors is included at the end of this post. Stay tuned for a book launch party and show at Gage in January. And if you would like to see more of Tom Hoffmann’s work you may visit him at his website.

A selection of books from Gage Academy instructors:

“Landscape Painting: Essential Concepts and Techniques for Plein Air and Studio Practice,” by Mitch Albala

“Classical Painting Atelier: A Contemporary Guide to Traditional Studio Practice,” by Juliette Aristides

“Contemporary Drawing, Key Concepts and Techniques,” by Margaret Davidson

“Lessons in Classical Drawing: Essential Techniques from Inside the Atelier,” by Juliette Aristides

“The Artist’s Complete Guide to Facial Expression,” by Gary Faigin

Follow the book and see more work by the contributors at the Hoffmann Watercolor Facebook page.

Heat and Motion Research: Watching the Leaves

November 20, 2011 by Iskra Leave a Comment

This morning the hard frost has arrived. What this means for people in Seattle is that it is not raining. The word “transfixion” was created for mornings such as this. There is a serious danger that I will do nothing for the rest of the day but sit on the porch in a quilt robe watching. A cat has it easy–it is their JOB to sit above the heat register on the windowsill and follow the leaves one by one, and no one thinks they are lazy or undermotivated.

In my backyard the sun comes through the last yellows of the plum and the maple, silhouetted against my neighbors’ giant firs. As the sun rises and warms the branches, one by one they let loose their leaves. They fall, like feathers, slowly, randomly, jubilantly, I wish I had such grace in letting go.

Leaves_Gouache_Painting — Looking at Leaves, gouache on paper, © Iskra Johnson

This study is from long ago, when I first discovered David Hockney and started sleeping with his complete works under my pillow.

Northwest Mystic Summer

Save the Date for Colorbath! Iskra at Taste | SAM

Meditation on the Winter Solstice, 2015

Tom Hoffmann’s New Book on Watercolor Painting

Heat and Motion Research: Watching the Leaves

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