Geoffrey Holdsworth - Recent Work

"Making paintings from nature, life or 'plein air', as it is often termed, is an exciting challenge to the artistic process, whether as an end in themselves, or as compositional color studies for studio oils. Sometimes, after travelling many miles, inclement weather can test me with a variety of complications from frozen watercolors to dusted oils. Yet over the past few years, my passion has been painting plein air in the everglades, deserts, mountains, canyons and forests of the United States of America and Canada, amid the bugs, burns, ticks, and blowing dust of the wild and remote open air studio. Oil paintings are now being made from some of these studies. Should you be interested in a particular study to purchase or a studio version in oils not yet painted, please feel free to make contact."

After a heavy snowmelt, the farmfields outside of town have become lakes rippling under the wind blown cumulus clouds. An earlier larger drawing was sold years ago before I was able to do a watercolor version, so I made this new study drawing and have finally begun the painting.

Once there was a homestead in the now overgrown grove of trees. A compositional graphite study drawing, (not shown), and a watercolor study, (see page two), served to help me paint this transitional winter wonderland of complex snowforms, sky patterns and mixed evergreen and hardwood trees.

Seeing these flowers blooming across from where I was painting Terlingua Creek, (see below), my wife Kathleen bravely clambered up the rock face and snapped a few photos from which I later sketched up a composition and painted this studio watercolor.

Mid July, and one hundred and fifteen degrees of dry heat enveloped about five miles of hiking that led me to a promontory overlooking a high plains desert wilderness creek and a far off herd of bison. High clouds that were curiously whipped gave way to dark thunderstorms from which I narrowly found shelter.

Big Bend affords plenty of wild places to portray amazing geological formations and native fauna. After invigorating yet depleting days of painting in the open air of this wind exposed site I felt the humility of remembering that paintings are always second to the actual experience.

An assortment of newspaper clipping about artist activists, high art and entrapment creates an atmosphere of an unhealthy cultural climate for the professional artist. The 'Voice of Fire' painting, Sniffy the Rat, toy artists, cultural job postings and barbed wire are all illuminated under a harsh lamp for your contemplation.

This early morning winter scene with contrails crossing the sky over an agricultural scene showing a distant manure spreader across the valley, an unharvested corn field, tree lines and a sliver of the Thames River with a wonderful snag and apple tree in the foreground...just plain fun painting.

One of my favorites which I tried to buy back from a University Gallery that I had fallen out of favour with, depicts a beautiful spring day along the Thames River north of St Marys, replete with pear blossoms, bridge remnants ( my kids by the car ) and a smudge on the gravel road that turns out to be, upon closer viewing, a dead groundhog with its aged hide poked through with gravel. So the question is visually posed... are we in the only paradise we know of with a dead groundhog...or has the very dead groundhog passed away into a paradise with Francis of Assisi? It is a very strong piece of painting with a bold cobalt sky, contrail and flowing, blowing grasses...a delight to paint and see. I just wish the painting was somewhere it could be appreciated. You know, paintings in Public and University Galleries tend to vanish forever never to be seen again by the public, doomed to a dark vault and forgotten. If, as an artist, you are a political snake of an animal, you might be able to chum up the director and curator for real viewing instead of slide banks.