Don Valley Art Club

Title: Walsh Road No.1
Medium: Oil
Size: 6″x8″
Artist: Carol Berry
Year: 2010

About the painting: It was an unusually warm day for the first weekend of June, so I wore short shorts, a tank top and crocs. I remembered sunscreen but I thought it was too windy for my fancy new plien air umbrella so I took it down. Big mistake for two reasons. Although I was very happy with my painting, the mid-tones are a bit dark when viewed indoors, because the strong daylight light was so much brighter when painting without my umbrella’s shade. And because I was in the direct sunlight, I myself got fried by the sun, but only where I missed with my sunscreen. Particularly horrible are the small circle tan marks on my white feet where the holes in my crocs let in the sun.

About the artist: I am involved in both the applied and the fine arts fields. Work days are spent as a production designer, creating print layouts on my Mac. With job and family commitments, as well as (oddly) my volunteering for my art club, I only find time to paint a couple of times a week. I attend Tuesday evening life painting sessions at the Don Valley Art Club, where the models hold one pose for three hours. On the weekend I try to paint en plein air, capturing the orderly farmland and countryside near Toronto, Ontario. I spend about three hours on these life and plein air paintings and I consider these quick studies to be finished paintings. The benefit of working alla prima is that I push myself to focus on the composition and values. I try changes to the colours on my palette and with the materials I work with. No touch-ups are done later in the studio, these studies capture a moment in time. I approach larger studio paintings completely differently, much more time is spent planning their composition and developing the forms with underpainting and glazing.

Artist’s website: http://www.carolberryartdesign.com/