Inspiration from the mountains of North Idaho. Summertime always slips away. The old cliches about time are all true.
The last nine years I have picked huckleberries hiking down from the top of Schweitzer, our local ski resort. This year it was a bit too early for the berries but it was still beautiful!
A bit more detail work and color glazing. Now this painting is finished!
I am really enjoying working on larger paintings again. While I am painting I am continuing to prepare new wood panels. When winter rolls around I will be stocked up just like the squirrels.
A new painting on the easel! I have had Covid the entire time I painted this. It has been a strange shaking fever dream but the painting came through! All of these years since the pandemic, this is the first time I caught the virus… I have been fortunate.
It is exciting to be working on some larger paintings once more. I am also preparing a lot of wood panels for future work, stay tuned.
Yesterday I shipped off this new painting to an art collector in Massachusetts! The buyer chose no frame but rather gold leaf edges (visible in the video). This all resulted in a lovely piece. The downside is I have gold flakes all over the studio floor.
My new painting! It feels really great, painting at a larger scale. The summer was pretty much all small boards. It was a very practical approach but not entirely satisfying.
My parents have headed back to Arizona. The weather is cooling so I will be in the studio much more. I have felt desperate to get lost in my work but everything feels very sad now. I will do what I do, keep pushing forward with my art. I suppose it is a strange way to spend my time, I know it makes no sense.
I have always loved watching clouds and weather systems rolling through. I very often find myself echoing nature in my studio, it is the heart of my work.
This is one of the many small paintings I have done in the last couple months. Today I am moving onto my first 18” x 24” painting in a number of months. Excited to get back to a larger scale.
Painting time was pretty limited this summer. I focused on small paintings that I could finish in shorter work windows. I finally used my last small panel!
This painting has a real presence, and feels like something “new”. I am chasing ideas and following the paint into darker country. March 2025 will be my next solo show, it will be at Haven Gallery in Long Island, New York.
A new small painting completed this week. An ode to summer.
Three small water paintings freshly completed. I am putting together a pretty good collection of small works. Painting time has been pretty limited over the summer so these smaller pieces have been my focus. I work with a number of galleries that have “small works shows” in the fall. So I will be sending these smaller paintings all over the country in the coming months.
brian sostrom 