Allied Arts Landscape Painting with Jim Palmer

Artists Bev Muendel-Atherstone, Jim Palmer, Connie Simmons, Bob Davis
C. Davis photo

Chris Davis, Pincher Creek Voice

The Allied Arts Council of Pincher Creek is offering a Landscape Painting course instructed by local artist Jim Palmer. The formal class commences on Saturday, September 8 between 1 and 4 pm and runs for 8 Saturdays until October 27.  It is being held in the art studio located in the lower area of the Lebel Mansion (696 Kettles Street), with field trips when the weather co-operates.

Jim Palmer

Jim is holding three additional free sessions on an informal basis August 18, August 25 and September 1.  At his invitation I rendezvoused with him and three of his students at the  August 18 outing.  They were making the most of a sunny Sunday afternoon to work on sketches next to Pincher Creek (the creek) just east of Pincher Creek (the town).

Jim Palmer, Instructor

"There's six in the course," Palmer explained.  "Three of them are here today."

This is the sixth year he has been teaching the course.  "It has slowly evolved over the last six years.  I feel it's at a point now where it's a 12 week course.  We started in mid august and are going through to the end of October.  On average we've had five or six participants each year.  Some stay year after year."

"I think we've managed to break it down into the very beautiful basics, that so many beginners miss in the early stages. We help them get off on the right step, so to speak. People seem to enjoy it and benefit from it.  Some people get into it for the first time and really take off and love it.  Others are more experienced and they come away with something that they didn't have before."

"This is the first time we've been at this location at the Cook's place, east of town.  We've been way out south, out toward the mountains, and places west as well. We try to find good, classic practice locations."

Palmer expressed his appreciation for the opportunities provided to artists by Allied Arts, including providing a space to show and sell artwork, and facilities and space to work in.  "I get a lot of support from the Allied Arts Council."  Some of the works that have resulted from his course have been in shows including at the Lebel Mansion and in the Allied Arts Council facility in Lethbridge.  Two of the four artists that are showing September 7 at the Allied Arts Council facility in Lethbridge are local to Pincher Creek. "Myself and Mike Judd are local guys (in that show)," explained Palmer.  "It has an environmental theme, I'd say."

"I'm doing scenes 3 feet by 4 feet of landscape that is manifestly threatened by power lines.  I'm showing beside each painting the map showing where the power line is projected, showing where the artist is sitting, and where the view is.  I hunted around a lot to find a combination of a beautiful painting and something for that theme, and I think I've found it.  It only took a year."

Palmer has been an active artist for many years.  "I have been doing oils since my very beginnings which was in the 1950's.  In a good school in New Jersey for three years, with an excellent instructor.  Then went to McGill University.  McGill only had one studio course back in my day, late 50's early 60's, so I took it twice, which was as much as they'd let me take one course over again without failing it."

After the Navy and such things, I went to Paris."  He studied there at Le Centre D'Artistes D'Etudiantes Paris.  "The center for artists and students in Paris that doesn't exist anymore, unfortunately."

"It was a great school in it's day."

As to cutbacks in Alberta arts education funding, he expressed a candid opinion.  "I will give you a modest comment from a guy that is over 70 that has been infatuated with classical art all my life.  You won't want to print this... They can cut a lot of that stuff out, and it wouldn't hurt a thing."

I asked him if his comment reflected a conflict between classical art and modern art philosophies.

"In a sense it is but you could have had that conflict back in the 60's, 70's, or earlier.  It would have been more of a valid argument on the side of the  new directions, because they really were exploring in new directions, with  artistic media, which I think has kind of stopped happening with conception art."

"There's evidence that the classical principals of fine art are actually coming back.  Students from  Leipzig Germany, behind the Iron Curtain until Glasnost, they missed a lot of that in that academy, and when the wall fell,  those students started selling their works right out of school for thousands of dollars.  In other words, there was a taste for what they were producing in classical art."

"All modern art obeys the old classics.  Nobody is getting away from Plato's and Socrates' definitions of beauty, which is unifying diversity.  Elevating us screwed up human beings to a level of beauty and perfection through art."

"I think the artist has a deep responsibility to the art and to the himself, and to principles and concepts.  I think most artists work very, very hard in that direction.  Universities work hard in those directions.  The beauty of the classic is that classic means class, classroom.  This is teachable stuff.  That is one of the ways it has evolved over 2000 years. Academy art.  Academy, school.  It's what you can actually teach. There are a few basic principals of harmony and diversity, and contrast, and tension that are classic and academy and that can be taught."

"Picasso knew this and even the most wild, abstract expressionists know this stuff, they just believe they can get to it a little more directly in their soul, their spirit."

"Beauty, I think, thankfully remains beauty.  But that's not the major objective for many artists, either.  They do want the expressiveness, the violence, the conflict,  and the anger.  They want stuff like that.  God knows that it's been done in classical art as well.  You don't have to dig very far into the Louvre or other old museums to find some pretty angry, violent stuff."

Palmer said it's not too late to join his class for the fall session.  "The wider advertisement for the course won't get out until early September, so there could be people coming in after that point as well, and I'm happy to start over with them.  I'm delighted with beginners. I love creating and conducting an accessible course that people can get into meaningfully and well.  That's an objective of mine."

Jim Palmer gives Bev Muendel-Atherstone a few pointers

"We run every Sunday afternoon, we've debated about whether 1:00 pm is the best time to start, due to weather, which will change anyway."

"I meander around, and try not to get in peoples way while they're working.  I certainly hope they're in another world of dream, vision, happiness and find something with paper and pencil that I don't know about until they get it on paper."

"We move quickly into paint, we do sketches, drawings and we can transfer the drawings onto the canvas technically with a grid.  Once it's on the canvas, we go into monochrome.  All in a brownish tone to get the lights, and darks and values correct and make sure that composition is singing.  That's when the students start to worry about color theory and stuff like that."

Bev Muendel-Atherstone was one of the artists taking advantage of the beautiful day to work on her sketching.

She's a retired psychologist with a Ph.D. from the University of Alberta in Educational/School Psychology. A resident of Lethbridge, she ran for the NDP in Bow Valley in the last Provincial election. She works mainly in watercolour.

"The last time our focus was on edges, shapes, and contrasts.  We're supposed to be very loose, get the edges, focus on large shapes, and then try and do contrast using a one to five value grid."

"Jim decided that this time we should focus on the edges of shapes."

"I love this, you see it a lot here with our mountains and prairies, and you get all these overlapping edges of shapes.  We're not to be doing much today with contrast or values, but finding these edges of shapes."

"Is one every really an artist?  your always learning, becoming an artist.  I think we all see things, and learn to see more.  By studying art, you learn to see and appreciate  more of the world around you."

Muendel-Atherstone said she registers colors at a different intensity than others, and it seems to her that she sees the world as being more brilliant in terms of the way it is couloured.

As to the value of being an artist she said "I think art informs your life.  It makes you focus more of both the detail, and the big picture.  It makes us more aware."

Bob Davis

Lifelong artist Bob Davis of Cowley has been taking Jim Palmer's course for four years, and was out in the bright sunshine sketching despite being up late the night before performing at an anniversary party, being a musician and songwriter in addition to his artistic endeavours.  Examples of his sketchwork can be seen every year at Pincher Creek's Cowboy Gathering, vignettes adorning the long banners that surround the Horseshoe Pavilion during that event, at which he's also a perennial performer.

"Jim's got us working on lines," he affirmed.  "I've been doing this kind of stuff my whole life.  I really like doing it.  I like painting animals, but you need this landscape to put behind them."

"I'm polishing my edges, but I'm learning a ton, too.

"You learn to see things differently.  Before I might look at some trees, and say, oh, there's a bunch of green trees.  Now I look at them and I see four or five greens in the tree."

"I watch guys on tv, too.  There are some good art teachers on tv."

Davis certainly doesn't do it for the money, or lack thereof.  "I think I sold one picture in my life."

"I like oils best."

Davis will be performing at Heritage Acres' Fall Fair, which runs from September 13-15 this year, incorporating Heritage Days, which was postponed this month due to inclement weather.

Connie Simmons

Connie Simmons has been active as an artist since the 1970's, with a few reality breaks along the way.  She's also a member of  the Oldman Watershed Council.  She said she had wandered away from art a little bit and the course was a chance to dive back in.

"I'm trying to get back into it on a very basic level."

She prefers painting landscapes and works primarily in watercoulours and oils, but "I love oils.  They're beautiful, very rich, and deep and a bit more forgiving than watercolours."

"This kind of landscape really asks for those deep rich colours."

"I think when you're an artist you take and use the landscape.  Your work is coming through you, and you have license for interpretation of course.  I think it's so varied.  The light, different times of the day, it can be different each day."

She thinks about the subtext of the landscape she is portraying.  "What's it telling me?  Is it a good story?"

 Her work as an environmentalist and as an artist are closely related.  "Look at this water, It's so clean, and I want to keep it that way."

Links:
For more information, the Allied Arts Council of Pincher Creek has a new website (at the same address as their previous one) under development at http://pinchercreekarts.com

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