Laurel Sherrie

Please note: Laurel Sherrie will be participating in the 2010 "Open Studios Art Tour". Come see the artisit's studio and meet Laurel and special guest artist Richard Rowe on October 16th and 17th and October 23rd and 24th from 10:00AM to 5:00PM. Open Studios is a fund-raising event sponsored by "Arts Obispo" of San Luis Obispo County in California. Please visit their website www.artsobispo.org where a free catalog with directions to the artist's studio will be available beginning September 1st.

 I am passionate about the outdoors, painting the wild and beautiful places in California. I love California because it has so many different climates and scenes; Ocean, cliffs, sandy beaches, vineyards, stately oaks & rolling hills, glorious mountains and farm fields, cattle ranches, desert, sometimes only minutes apart. Everywhere I look I see paintings that need to be painted. To me the Landscape is alive. It speaks to me as a whole, not just a single tree or cow or bird, but as a whole. I have a perception of a living, breathing life form when I am really in tune with Nature. Nature is my passion and it drives me  

I love to paint early morning and late afternoon light, the drama of shadows and golden light of early morning, and the wonderful orange glow and deepening shadows of late afternoon. The interplay of light and shadows creates intriguing designs.

As a painter I get to experience so many beautiful locations and really absorb them, not just drive by.  I might be in the country on a dirt road, I often get invited to private ranches to see more beautiful scenes to paint.  What an incredible way to spend time outdoors. I find a scene that grabs my interest, really excites me. I set up my easel, and start working on a painting and get so involved with what’s in front of me and all around me it’s like time stands still. I don’t notice the discomforts that come with painting outdoors (bugs, heat, cold, wind), I’m just absorbed in the beauty all around me. At that time, it’s as if I exist on another plane, that plane of existence that is all the best of man and spirit. I want to share the scene in front of me; it’s a need to share it, and I do it with paint. I love to paint and couldn’t stop if I tried. 

I also paint in my studio, either putting finishing touches on paintings begun outdoors, or making larger paintings from studies done on location, or occasionally painting a still life I’ve set up. My studio is serene with a large patio door opening onto a secret garden with a beautiful Italian style fountain providing the sound of water creating mood, and where wild finches take their daily baths. And I have Andrea Bocelli or Pavarotti singing songs of love and inspiration.  I have had this great painting companion, my Border Collie.  He’s been going painting with me for years. He would just hang out with me, a very mellow, sweet guy, keeping me company.  He’s now retired at 16 years old, and we are training up his replacement, a Golden Retriever/ Bernese Mountain Dog mix named “Neo.” 

 I didn’t start out painting outdoors. I started out painting only in the studio, in a very realistic photographic way. I wanted to paint outdoors like Monet did, but I didn’t have the equipment, and it seemed like a big leap, and a hump I couldn’t get over. Then I took a workshop with a great painter, a friend of a friend of mine. I had no equipment, he loaned me a French easel, and the workshop was a great revelation. It totally changed how I painted. In fact for a whole year I struggled with how to deal with that change. I couldn’t paint the way I used to (and didn’t want to) and was having difficulty with the new way, but I kept working on it and working on it and finally made a breakthrough and started liking what I was painting again, a new way, outdoors.  And I’ve been working to improve my painting ever since.