Tag: animals

Shadows of the West

by Brian Sostrom, posted in Uncategorized

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I’ve wrapped up my herd of cow heads so now I’ll move on to other paintings. I’ve decided to use this particular painting for the promotional card for the show “Shadows of the West”. The show is going to start March 31st of this year. I have a lot more work to do before now and then! I will post more information about that as the date looms closer.

I am attaching an image that shows three other paintings that are part of the 5 cow heads I recently completed. I still need to take final photographs of one of these.

Look Ahead (candy)

by Brian Sostrom, posted in Uncategorized
Look Ahead (Candy)

This is an 18″ x 18″ acrylic painting that I recently finished.

Before I took the final photograph I took a snapshot with my iPhone in the studio. My subjects have been bouncing around from minimal landscapes to portraits of cows (cowscapes)? I thought it was interesting seeing the latest cow portrait next to “Cloud & Sea” on my easel. Wondering how these paintings will relate to one another in the context of a gallery show. Each painting was done by the same hand, same mediums and the same general approach. They are different paintings but they both are sort of a simplistic study of isolation/solitude. These two in particular had a nice relationship and set my mind at ease to some degree.

Building a collection of paintings for a show is both exciting and a bit daunting. I am always wondering if I shouldn’t narrow my scope and make a really tight collection of paintings with a very specific subject holding them together. The problem is when I’m working I always get excited about “the next painting”. Often this leads to something seemingly unrelated to the previous piece. Tangents and random explorations are part of the creative process and lead to new ideas and often new approaches. In a perfect world I would love to have a massive space where I could hang paintings to really get the overall feel. Then I would replace paintings that were not bolstering the show. Remove paintings that felt redundant or didn’t enrich the overall feeling. Create new paintings that would fill out the collection in just the right way. Of course this is not a perfect world and that is just a daydream. So ultimately I will follow my gut when choosing pieces and have a little faith…

Ballad of the fatted calf

by Brian Sostrom, posted in Uncategorized

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The fatted calf scampered over to the fence. He assumed my presence at the wire signaled it was time for me to feed him! ‘Twas  the other way round.

Note: This is a work of fiction. The calf, lovingly called “fatty”, has many sunny days ahead, presumably.

This is a painting I just varnished today. It is an 18″ x 18″ acrylic painting. The unusual textures throughout were predominantly created with a small squeegee and a palette knife. The very short story was something that occurred to me when I was out shooting reference shots of cows in some of the local fields. I felt guilty the way they would come running up to the fence and all I had to offer was a smile…
Brian

Dust Portrait

by Brian Sostrom, posted in Uncategorized

Dust PortraitI’m making a number of pretty large cow portraits. So far they are all 20″x20″. I’m trying to strike that balance between subtle atmosphere and interesting brush work/mark making. The paint in this one is harmonizing with the shining texture beneath the surface.

Last weekend I took a lot of reference photos not only of the ocean but of pastural scenery and the incarcerated cow. It seems there is no such thing as too much reference.

If you say run

by Brian Sostrom, posted in Uncategorized

 

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I wasn’t intending to post a photo of what I was working on tonight… but here we are. Still with David Bowie stuck in my brain. I always liked him but was never more excited about him than hearing Kurt Cobain say “that was a David Bowie song”… Today on rollingstone.com I was reminded of the excellent sketch he was in on Extras… oh man it reminds me why I loved Rickey Jervace as well… To a much lesser degree obviously. None of this has a thing to do with my late night painting… just thoughts and marks on a board. Also beef, it’s what’s for dinner.

Portrait Vignette

by Brian Sostrom, posted in Uncategorized

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This was a 10″ x 10″ cow portrait I did in acrylic not too long ago. Once again using the cow as sympathetic subject. I have been working on highly atmospheric environmental scenes of late. I have largely abandoned opaque colors since doing this painting. I am trying to make work with a lot of transparency and light penetrating the paint.  I hope to bring it back around and do some large sweeping landscapes with shadowy cows. We shall see where things go… Best to follow the work rather than trying to map out a plan.

Fog of Isolation

by Brian Sostrom, posted in Uncategorized

These two paintings were part of a small collection of animal paintings I did. Very heavily influenced by Tonalism, a movement that emerged in the 1880s. Works that fell under that umbrella of style were painted with an overall tone of colored atmosphere.

There were a lot of really interesting artists that were grouped into this art movement such as George Innes and James McNeil Whistler. My personal favorite was Albert Pinkham Ryder, his work is more stylized with a very grim and haunting look. I was excited to see some of his original pieces at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art a number of years ago!

Cow, boy.

by Brian Sostrom, posted in Uncategorized

I have been continuing with some atmospheric water and sky paintings but so far haven’t been too pleased with the results. Sometimes you can feel the magic, sometimes  you are alone in a paint spattered room. In the interim I figured I would post some more of my poor sad cow friends.