Painting the Taste of Tulalip

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The Taste of Tulalip, oil on canvas, 24 x 30 inches

As a wedding and event painter, I watch people eat a lot of great food while I paint. Of course clients offer me a plate, and sometimes even a place at the table, but I rarely have time for that. If people are sitting down, it’s time for me to paint.

The Taste of Tulalip, in it’s seventh year, is an invitational bringing together chefs, sommeliers, winemakers, and connoisseurs for a weekend of seminars, demonstrations, and gala dinners. I painted during the Italian-themed celebratory dinner, on a riser adjacent to the main stage.

My view was much wider than I included in the painting, and this time I decided not to try to bend the perspective to fit it all in. But I did make sure to get the contortionist on the left.

Tulalip Resort is a gaming casino, of course. So some time before dessert, the announcers instructed everyone to look under the cushion of their seat, and the individual who found there a sequined letter ‘T’ would go home with my painting. I painted her in the lower right.

McClelland- Miller Wedding, Fort Worth Zoo, Fort Worth, Texas

McClelland-Miller Wedding (detail; click to view full image) November 3, 2012

This was my first trip to Texas. When I called my wife after checking into the hotel, she said I already had an accent. Texas can grow on you that quickly.

Since nothing is small in Texas, this was one of the largest weddings I’ve done, with nearly 500 guests. The soaring, white pavilion at the Fort Worth Zoo was the site of both the wedding and the reception. After a faith-filled service with a gospel choir, guests adjourned to an adjacent pavilion for cocktails while the main space was transformed from chapel to magnificent dining hall. Both spaces were filled with thousands of roses and hydrangea, punctuated with phalaenopsis. 

A band of extraordinary vocal force and suave instrumentality played as the guests came in and found their seats. But the flower girl and ring bearer, twin toddlers belonging to the brides’ brother, found the dance floor first.

As I never know how long children will last at a party, I didn’t waste any time painting them. They appear just to the right of the bride, playing on the stairs to the bridal party’s raised dining stage.

This was a dancing crowd, and the lounge end of the party accommodated enormous participation. White leather couches flanked the dance floor, with the most Texan of all possible coffee tables: diamond plate aluminum truck bed tool boxes. As the spectrum lighting changed the room from purple to magenta and back again, the tool boxes shone like mirrors.

The tall, elegant bride and her all-American groom are seen here surrounded by their friends on the dance floor. The gracious, tuxedoed father of the bride gives his toast. 

Billy and Ingrid at Melrose Market Studios

What can be more elegant than the basement of an old urban produce warehouse, with exposed brick and old growth fir beams? Said basement dressed up by Tacoma based wedding designer Amanda Rose, who’s company Oak & Cyprus Weddings and Events also did the flowers. The small bouquets were simple and colorful, with surprising elements, like succulents. She brought in carefully selected antiques from Vintage Ambiance. Cake by People's Cake. The band played exquisite, understated jazz. The gathering was intimate, with only about 70 guests. There were nieces and nephews aplenty.

 A seven year old named Liam kept me on my toes with questions about oil painting— citrus thinner, linseed oil, the particular use of a four inch wide badger fan brush, and how to erase mistakes. (I can do that with oils, since they stay wet for quite a while.) Perhaps his best question was in response to my comment that I used to have a friend named Liam: “Do you still have a friend named Liam?”

There was a baby in attendance who was just old enough to crawl. As she played with the latches on the antique trunk that centered the makeshift living room, I painted her as fast as I could. One never knows how long a baby will pose for a portrait.

The bride and groom eventually stood for a few minutes for me to paint them, sometime after the first dance. The parents of the bride are on the couch, and of the groom, standing in the lower right.  

A 60th Birthday Party at Newcastle Country Club

This celebrant’s friends appreciate her sense of style. They all came dressed in black and white; only the guest of honor was dressed in red. Prestwick Terrace, the permanent party tent at The Golf Club at Newcastle, was likewise festooned with black table cloths and white flowers.

As always, I arrived early enough to get a head start painting the room (big top) and the view. This is a magnificent place to watch a sunset, and the last time I painted here I depicted the evening at dusk. This time I chose the bright summer sunlight. By the time the sun went down, all I had left to paint were faces, anyway. Oh, and one tireless birthday girl in a bright red dress.

Painting the Tacoma Heart Ball 2012, Hotel Murano

     The Tacoma Heart Ball is the annual gala auction for the Tacoma chapter of the American Heart Association. Friday, April 27, 2012 was the third year I’ve painted this event. The venue this year was the über-stylish Hotel Murano. Formerly the Sheraton Tacoma, a stark, mid century Modern high rise, the Murano is now a veritable art museum. It’s namesake is the famed glass blowing island in Venice, where centuries of tradition have refined the glass art that lives on in the Pacific Northwest, in large part because of Tacoma’s native son cum patron, Dale Chihuly.

     In this tall lobby, enormous glass canoes hang like chandeliers— an homage yet again, this time to the Salish tribes of Puget Sound. They appear distant in my painting only because they are. I set up my easel on the third story of a four story atrium, looking down the long hall toward the ballroom. We see the canoes lengthwise, so in the painting, alas, they look like hanging vases. 

     The nearer chandelier is a magnificent tangle of reflective glass from the isle of Murano itself, and the largest that glass artist has ever made. Another hanging feature— for one night only— is a trapeze artist in the stairwell, serving champagne to the guests. 

     The hotel lobby bar is to the left on the main level. Unfortunately hidden beneath the balcony from my view, the bar’s north wall is almost entirely covered by a framed print, my favorite work of art in the building: a full size Chuck Close (another Washington favorite son.)

This labyrinth of architecture was a challenge to paint, and per usual, I bent the perspective to include all that I could see. At charity auctions, I always paint the buyer of the painting into the foreground, and we see him here approaching as if he’d just come off the elevators (unseen, to the right.)

The Brooks Wedding, Hotel 1000, Seattle

Hotel 1000 is a swank West Edge venue in downtown Seattle. The wedding was on the outdoor terrace, Which became the scene of the dance floor after cocktails and dinner. My view looks west (on the left of the painting) into the Library, and north on the right, into the hall where dinner was served. When I visited the venue with the bride to plan my location, there was a floor to ceiling window here. But it was removed, frame and all, at the bride’s request, and replaced with these flowing curtains.

 A creamy, conservative northwest palette was punctuated with brilliant spring colors, in small bouquets. Similarly, the bride’s unassuming but oh-so-beautiful dress was accented with carmine red pumps, and her bridesmaids’ shoes were orange. Noticed perhaps by only the wedding party, there was also a covert theme of black and white stripes, on the groom’s socks and the bride’s heels. Having had this pointed out to me, I made sure they were in the painting. 

Macias-Lawson Wedding, Arctic Club Hotel, Seattle, November 26, 2011

The Arctic Club Hotel is one of the greatest pieces of architecture in Seattle. Built in 1917, it is distinguished by two-dozen terra cotta walrus heads lining the Cherry Street and Third Avenue facades. After the Nisqually earthquake ten years ago, when the building was languishing as city offices, some of these walruses had their tusks held on with duct tape. But in recent years the building has been acquired and beautifully restored to its historic splendor by a company of Mr. William Lawson, whose son was married there on Saturday.

The building is mixture of architectural styles, but the Dome Room evokes Paris in the Belle Époque. I have painted in the room before, and I hope to again— many times. In fact, I think it would be my dream art studio. So it was really a privilege to paint the room for its new owners.

This painting was also an opportunity for me to do something I’ve never done before: a vertical wedding painting. The size and format were actually dictated by the wall on which the painting will eventually hang, but it works compositionally because of the Dome Room’s magnificent stained glass ceiling, which occupies the top half of the painting.

At most weddings and events, I paint on a French easel, which is a portable travel set designed in the days of the Impressionists to carry enough paints in the box for a plein aire outing. I use this for paintings up to 30 inches high, though it gets a little rickety with torque on paintings as wide as 40 inches. For the Macias-Lawson wedding, the canvas was 48 wide and 60 high— the second largest I’ve done for an event, and by far the tallest. I rented a van to move a big easel from the studio, even though the venue was just six blocks away! (Its also unadvisable to walk through the neighborhood carrying a big wet oil painting in the rain, after midnight.) The easel was designed for paintings up to 59 inches high, and needed a minor modification for this job. But it has a great sliding carriage, which allowed me to set the painting low at first, when I painted that grand ceiling before the wedding, and simply slide the whole thing up the ratcheted vertical support to paint the lower half during the reception. I used my French easel on the side for a tableau, to hold my paint and brushes.

It really would take a week to faithfully and realistically render the architectural details of this exquisite room. But as with paintings I’ve done at The Ruins, where an excellent muralist labored for three years to adorn the place, my scribblings are quick impressions, meant to evoke that single evening in its magic moment. By constricting my painting time to the time of the event (with some allowance to paint the setting in just the hours before), I control, harness, and channel the energy of expedience. If I were to take the painting back to the studio to touch it up, dither over it, and— as one of my illustration teachers called it — noodle it to death, that energy would leak out of the painting. Some people, upon hearing (but not seeing) what I do, ask me if I’m going to take a photo of the wedding, and do the whole painting back at the studio. I could, of course, and I could make the painting look just like the photo. But you can get that from any of several corporate studios that email your photos to China, where factory artists copy them faithfully for the cost of a good craft store frame.

There are no photos from any wedding that depict what I paint; I do not capture a sliver of time in a click of a shutter, but the whole elapse of the evening over several hours. Mini-portrait-caricatures depict the key figures. The bride and groom, in this case, were painted in their entirety during their First Dance. I have to confess here that I take extensive liberties with perspective, even with my point of view. I have compressed nearly 180 degrees of view into this vertical rectangle. When a camera does this, we call it a fish-eye lens, and close objects become enormous and far details disappear. Its great for documenting architecture, but people, not so much. I paint as if I were on a ladder, and the floor angled like a raked stage. This allows me to give elements within the room relatively equal importance as events, rather than distorting closer things.

Artistry lies as much in the process and interpretation of what the artist sees, as in the skill with which it is rendered.

Urban Unveiled, 2011, at Seattle's Benaroya Hall

It was a pleasure to be invited to paint at Urban Unveiled for the third year in a row. The painting belongs to Jesse Brix and Travis Burney of True Colors events, which produces this hip

wedding show, featuring a fashion show by Luly Yang.

Painting the lobby of Seattle’s Benaroya Hall presents a challenge, to the nth degree, that I face in some measure at any wedding reception that runs into the evening. That is, I have to begin a painting during daylight, knowing that I will finish it after dark. All of my wedding and event paintings are a snapshot not of a moment in time, but a span of time over several hours. I have yet to try to depict both daytime and nighttime on the same canvas. I have to decide which it is, and almost always, it needs to be whichever comes later.

I always come to the venue a couple of hours before an event, and paint the room. Once the event begins, I can then focus on just painting people. But that means painting the grand lobby of this symphony hall in bright, south facing daylight. The people arrive as the setting sun colors the skyscrapers outside these four story glass walls with rapidly changing shadows, and then the ceiling dances with choreographed up-lighting, as the windows go dark and reflect the interior. From the very beginning, I paint in anticipation of this final lighting. At first, the window frames are dark lines against a bright background. But I know they will later become light lines against a dark background.

I know this because I’ve painted here before. But when I paint somewhere new, especially when it’s a destination wedding and I haven’t been able to scout out the place beforehand, I have to learn to look around and visualize with prescience. Always, even in familiar venues, I have to ask the planner what the lighting design will be— what will be dimmed, what will be accentuated.

Then, as everything changes, I take what comes, and paint from direct observation. It is the opposite of the perfection one seeks in studio painting. But the result is always something spontaneous, fluid, and irreplaceably unique.

A Bainbridge Island Birthday Party

These people know how to throw a party.

Over a year ago, the wife contacted me to do a caricature of her, which she then personally copied onto her own handmade china plates for more than fifty guests for her 70th birthday. It would take her a year to create the ceramics. When she came to the studio for her caricature, she saw examples of my wedding paintings, which I often keep at the studio and deliver after they've dried. She loved the idea, and immediately booked me for the date.

The couple live on Bainbridge Island, looking across Puget Sound at Seattle, Washington. The party was set on their expansive, many terraced lawns, amid lush flowering gardens and ancient cedar trees. A well kept path led down the bluff to the sandy beach. A dance floor was laid for the occasion, and a cover band played classic rock. There were fire dancers, belly dancers, and exquisite food. The guests came dressed to the nines, but also in extraordinary costumes (note the elephant on a stick in the lower center of the painting.) Desserts included fresh spun cotton candy.

And since the event was at the client's home, I was able to leave the painting there, for a change!

I'm hoping to be invited back for her 80th.

Museum Quality Reprints

I don't know why I didn't think of this before. A groom recently asked me if it would be possible to make reprints of my painting of their wedding. As a matter of fact, I have an excellent source for that. The guy who make giclée prints on canvas of my religious paintings is right here in the neighborhood (Pioneer Square, Seattle), and can print individual copies on demand. These are archival, museum quality prints, canvas stretched over wood, just like the original oil. In the case of my client who thought of it first, prints were made for the grooms' parents. But a couple might also consider reprints as thank-you cards, using traditional offset printing.

Having an artist painting live at a wedding tends to be a great entertainment for the guests. It goes without saying that the couple will enjoy the painting in their home, happily ever after. With today's technology, so can their guests!

5th Avenue Theater Gala Auction and 30th Anniversary, June 19, 2010

This year my vantage point was from the landing on the central staircase of the ornate Chinese entry hall. In 1926, architect Robert C. Reamer and interior designer Gustav F. Liljestrom modeled this interior after three of Imperial China's most splendid structures: the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heavenly Peace and the Summer Palace. It was restored to its glory in 1980.

The great challenge for me in painting this venue is editing— every detail can barely be observed, much less rendered in likeness, in a few hours. I’m learning to simplify, becoming more impressionistic, and still keep the essentials necessary to record a memory of a place and an evening.

At benefit auctions, items rarely sell for more than their stated value. This is because donated items are often products available to the public at market price— a case of wine, a vacation package, etc. But I paint only one painting during the cocktail hour and silent auction each year. Several patrons noticed themselves depicted in the painting, and others had reasons to want to remember this particular event in a singular way.

Mine was the last item in the live auction, and bidding for the 30” x 40” painting started at $1500. In a flurry of raised paddles, the asking bid quickly passed the stated value of $3750 (For a complete list of my fees for event paintings, go here). The drama then slowed, and drew itself out as other patient bidders replaced the early contenders. There was spontaneous applause each time the price passed another thousand dollars, and sustained applause as the gavel came down at $7250.

I’m looking forward to doing this again next year.

Northwest Corks and Crush Auction, with Ingrid Bergman's Ferrari

Northwest Corks and Crush was just like any other wine auction, except for the classic cars on display. It was like having a benefit auction in a car museum. The cars weren’t for sale, but were a great conversation starter for this crowd. I don’t think I’d ever painted a car before. The luxury for me was that they sat still long enough.

Given the freedom to choose my vantage, I set up my easel behind the rarest car I’m likely to ever see. This 1954 Ferrari 375 MMbelongs to Northwest philanthropists John and Mary Shirley, but is nicknamed for its earlier glamorous owner, Ingrid Bergman. Its estimated $20M value doesn’t just come from the touch of celebrity; it played a significant role in the history of the design of Ferraris. It was a single seat race car when Bergman’s husband, director Alberto Rossellini, bought it to drive on the streets of Rome, where it incurred some minor body damage. Rossellini returned it to the factory, asking them to make it into a coupé suitable for both him and his wife. The resulting design by Carrozzeria Scaglietti was the paradigm for perhaps the next twenty years of luxury performance road machines.

The north light that flooded into the arena throughout the afternoon and into the evening gave halos to the figures that passed in front of me. Painting these backlit patrons, I felt like I was back in art class with William Cummings, whose work I hadn’t thought had influenced me so much.

The winning bidder and his colleagues were painted in to the scene immediately after the auction.

In the above photo, the familiar auctioneer behind me is Jeff Randall. Photo by Heather Curbow. Used by permission of Team Photogenic.

Heart Ball, Tacoma, Washington, February 20, 2010

This American Heart Association fundraiser was held in the spacious Tacoma convention Center, where the theme of the lobby art recalls the city’s timber roots. What looks like a brown X in the left side of the picture is an installation of heavy beams, salvaged from pioneer era buildings that used to occupy the site.

When I began painting, the room was filled with daylight, its panorama extending from the skyline to Mount Rainier. As with the painting in Benaroya Hall last October, the great challenge was for me to anticipate what the room would look like after dark, yet capture as much of the architectural setting as possible before the guests arrived. This is literally a reversal of light and dark. In the afternoon, the atrium walls were dark lines across a bright sky; by evening they became silver bars across blackened reflections. It was necessary to draw the window frames to establish the perspective of the room, but as the light changed, they had to be redrawn with the opposite colors.

Then why don’t I just use a pencil? I draw directly with oil paint, because it can be wiped off and changed much easier than erasing pencil, and because anything that doesn’t need changing is already finished without additional coloring.

These live event paintings are constantly changing until the evening is over. I routinely wipe off figures and fixtures to replace them with new people who’ve entered the room. But if I followed the academic method of drawing first with pencil or charcoal, then applying a fixative and coloring afterward in oils, I would not be able to change the initial drawing as the party moves and morphs. Not only would I be unable to erase the fixed pencil lines, once the painting began I would not be able to go back and add more pencil lines. My direct technique allows me to decide at the last minute to add your flower girl, as she is suddenly chased through the scene by the ring barer, and then gone.

Zinzanniversary! Painting at Teatro Zinzanni’s 10th Anniversary Celebration November 1, 2009

For their anniversary, Teatro Zinzanni held an auction in their Spiegel Tent to benefit the Zinzanni Institute of Circus Arts, with performances by Ann Wilson of Heart, El Vez, Francine Reed, and the great cast that regularly serves up Love, Chaos and Dinner at this wild and wacky place. (The Tom Douglas designed five course meal is as good as the show.) I painted the cocktail hour and silent auction in the lounge. The gentleman in the hat bought the painting.