Tag: life

Western Shadows III

by Brian Sostrom, posted in Uncategorized

This is the third bison skull painting in the series of “Western Shadows”. As I type this it dawns on me I’ve adopted the Led Zeppelin naming method… which means that number IV will be the most popular and this one will be my personal favorite… tangent!

This painting is 18″x18″ acrylic on plexiglass. I’ve developed some very heavy textures on the back of this piece as you can see there are interesting crater shapes and extensive cracks that catch the light. I’m taking a very basic subject, one that I adore, and experimenting with different ways to visualize it. I am currently working on the fourth one so before long I will be able to have all four up on the site for comparison.

Lulu decide to come by the photo cube and inspect the progress, she didn’t have much to say. But what is there to say?

Final Word

by Brian Sostrom, posted in Uncategorized
Western Shadows #2

This is the completed version of “Western Shadows (bison skull) II”. It is, for some reason,  particularly difficult to capture this painting digitally, it just doesn’t seem to represent the final piece properly. I am including some detailed photographs that display some of the intriguing textural elements that make the physical painting so much more compelling (at least to me).

This is an acrylic painting that is 20″ x 20″

 

 

In the Studio

by Brian Sostrom, posted in Uncategorized

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I am finishing up the second “Western Shadows (bison skull)” painting. I will try to get a proper photograph of it when it is complete. There are some pretty interesting textures happening that aren’t apparent in this photograph. I’m planning on doing at least one more of these but who can tell?

Western Shadow (bison skull)

by Brian Sostrom, posted in Uncategorized

IMG_8644This is the newest acrylic painting I have completed. I am putting more pieces together for the “Shadows of the West” show. My goal here is to create what amounts to a really atmospheric still life painting. I want it to have a very ghostly ethereal quality, not entirely there. I found a bit of success with this particular painting. I am currently working on a couple other paintings with a similar approach, hopefully I will be able to post another one next week!

 

 

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

Throwback Thursday

by Brian Sostrom, posted in Uncategorized

 

Ten years ago I painted the labels for this series of Snoqualmie wines. It was a fun experience because one of my friends was the designer at the winery… it is who you know. It was an excuse to go out to lunch and hang around under the banner of “work”. Sadly he left the winery before the project was finished.

The end result was kind of an interesting look. It was a lot of fun to see the wine in stores, every time I went to a new grocery store I would look for it! I’ve attached two pictures I took at the Snoqualmie Winery in Prosser Washington. If you are a fan of wine this is a great area to do a lot of wine tasting. There are several dozen tasting rooms and several annual wine-tasting events. It is also on the dry side of Washington State so odds are good you will see some sunshine! .

I decided to do this post as a result of instagram. I was poking around, as people do, and just happened to come across a picture of someone with one of these bottles of wine next to a glass enjoying a summers day. Hard to believe ten years have come and gone… they come and go faster now don’t they. Snoqualmie introduced new labels a couple of years ago so you can no longer find mine in stores.