Catherine Tuttle Artist Statement

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Current Exhibit

Updated: 9.28.2010

CATHERINE TUTTLE

Peaks and Valleys
October 2010

I have painted with oils for my "Peaks and Valleys" exhibit to challenge myself. I have worked in watercolor for a number of years, and devoted the past three years to more consistent work with oil painting. I feel I can generally do what I want with watercolor, and thus I set out to hone my skills with oils to more fully express my ideas about landscape and sense of place.

I find oil painting intriguing for the rich range of colors, values, and depth of field it can present. I find I can more fully describe the qualities of deep space, atmosphere, and the solidness of earth with oil paint. Watercolor, in turn, has distinct qualities of light, layered transparencies, and brushwork oil paints can not capture, and it affords a different experience for me. I have often found pleasure painting the same mountain range or river scene in both media, and find each a different means for expressing my feelings of connection to the beauty of landscapes I am fortunate to know.

Tuckerman Ravine is a oil painting done from a visit to the Ranger Station at the base of this impressive headwall, as the last of the snowpack was melting, in the month of June. The day I visited, some waterfalls were still cascading down the face of Tuckerman, and the wet cliffs were shining in the sun. The challenge of painting Tuckerman was achieving the color of the granite, using layers of all three primaries, while keeping the resulting gray tones lively. The trees below Tuckerman are a study in greens, with tall spruces and the cool shades of a boreal forest.

The watercolor of Tuckerman has mist rising off the top of the alpine garden and the "Lip" as the air of late morning clears, and I enjoyed working to capture this fleeting effect. I used transparent layers of first pale yellows, then reds, and blues to approximate the headwall and make the purple-gray of granite in the morning light.

Cannon Mountain is one of the places I find most striking in the White Mountains. When working on the oil painting of Cannon, my goal was to convey the impressive size and depth of the mountain as seen from the north side of Franconia Notch. I want to show the distance from one side of the mountain to the other, and the steep, vertical rise from the bottom to the top of Cannon. Mt Washington from Mt. Monroe is an oil painting looking up at the dome of the highest White Mountain, while down at the Lake of the Clouds Hut, and further down at the Great Gulf. From this height, I hope to show the immense space of the mountain, and maybe a little of the excitement, or even vertigo, one can get grasping the scale of the scene.

Plum Island, Tidal River is a watercolor done while overlooking the salt marshes from the bridge connecting Newburyport with the island. My desire in selecting this high tide, river scene is to convey the deeply receding space, the inward flowing water, and the greens of the marsh grass in high summer.

Oyster River, in Durham, is a landscape I return to paint again and again. I am attracted to the zigzags of the receding space, as the river winds back to Great Bay, bordered on each side by marsh grass and the rounded shapes of tall, deciduous trees. I have painted Oyster River in different light, at different times of the year, and will be called to paint it yet again when I drive to the coast.

I have been fortunate to work with Stoney Jacobs over the past two summers, painting from observation and outdoors in the White Mountain region. Stoney has encouraged me to experiment with a different and reduced palette, more aligned with that of the Impressionists, in order to capture the quality of light in a landscape scene. The smaller works in this show were done on site and each is my record of the day, the light, and the place. Setting up my easel at nine o'clock on a summer morning, looking towards a hayfield and winding river, in front of a clearing Presidential Range, has been an invitation to paint, and an artistic joy I will always remember.