Discussions with Mark Norseth

Aloha, and thanks for visiting my blog. I’m a painter living and working on the island of Oahu, Hawai’i. Born and raised in Portland, Oregon, I moved to New York City for over a decade to pursue an in-depth study of painting, supporting myself as a freelancer. I’ve been what people like to call a full-time painter for a dozen years, but it seems like about four.

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs, ask what makes you come alive, and then go do that. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive.” — Howard Thurman

I’ve started this blog to keep people up to date on what’s going on with my work, share experiences and ideas, and dream aloud a bit.  More…

– Mark Norseth

We had an absolutely delightful time starting up our plein-air figurative class at the Spalding House campus (formerly known as the Contemporary Museum) here on Oahu.

We had a very nice turnout of around 16 eager students, my terrific model Tina as our first subject, and all arranged on the beautiful, tree filled acreage overlooking Diamond Head.  We got to work right away with sketches in various mediums, and a fine time was had by all.

The small (8 x 10″) sketch above was my introductory oil demonstration piece, hammered out a bit at a time over our three hours together.  Can’t wait for next week, it’s too much fun.

Treated myself to another drive by watercolor yesterday…with some of the work tweeked in the studio this AM.  It’s a spot near where I needed to go anyway, and so I timed my trip to give myself the opportunity to get this under way.

as yet untitled  watercolor,  12 x 15″

I’ve been spending every possible sunny morning working on this painting. It’s moving along well (I think) and so I’m posting some new shots from the last week or so.

Winter brings some powerful winds, and so this arrangement is how I keep the trusty old easel standing.  It works quite well, and I’m able to continue work on days that would be impossible otherwise.

A calmer day, towards the end of my session. The warmth of the color of the painting has given way to the cooler light of the later morning.

The painting is about 80% complete. I plan to add a couple small figures and do some re-designing of the light and dark patterns in the foreground now that I have the colors figured out. I’ve made an effort to build the paint surface heavily in some of this area, and that will require some removal of paint to accomplish, so I expect to take this into the studio for the final working out and completion of the piece.

That’s good news, the break from the elements is welcome.

Winter is upon us here, which means a drop in temperature of a few degrees, more rain and wind, and little else.  I live on the windward side of Oahu, so we have moisture-laden clouds stacked up against the mountains each morning, and they back out over our beaches. This usually blocks the sunlight considerably. However, one of the bennies I have learned to exploit is that overcast mornings are ideal for beginning new paintings. Since my motto is “Never a wasted day”, out I go.

This is a composition that I first tried a few years ago and  pursued as far as creating a panel to acommodate it, shown here on the easel (it’s 24 x 36″).  Somehow I gave the painting up as too difficult to attempt, the idea went underground, and it wasn’t until a week ago that I happened to be serendipitously walking by, re-experienced the light effect, and rekindled my enthusiasm to try and make this work.  Perhaps three years have passed from that first inspiration until now.

You can’t get any sense of the light I intend the painting to contain from this photo, because this is a totally overcast day and no colors or shadows are in play.   But it’s a good day to start designing the picture outside because:

A. The overcast conditions are consistently, though more dimly,  illuminating the main shapes for a longer period than a sunlit day.

Which means

B. I can spend more time considering the position of  the main shapes because I’m not distracted by color and chasing the light around. Yet.

At one point, a glorious one, the sun broke through for about a minute, and I was treated to the beautiful patterns of light and shade and warm and cool colors that will make this painting work, if I can get them.  Hence the reminder on the bottom of the sketch below, “Light will be everything~”

This is not going to be easy.

Here’s the last of the pencil sketches…

A recent 16 x 12″ oil study from the model.  I’ve looked forward to having the time and opportunity to work on a subject with his characteristics, and completed this in about eight hours.  It’s straight paint from the tube, without medium, and will look better after varnishing.

One thing I’ve decided is that I’m going back to flake white for figures.