“I see skies of blue and clouds of white.
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.”
~ Louis Armstrong
Painting above is showing Madeline Island, part of the Apostle Islands. Lake Superior, Wisconsin.
My summer adventure saga continues with the Artists Retreat and Mentoring program that I attended in August led by
Kami Mendlik. Kami is a well known landscape artist from Minnesota and I have followed her art for many years. When I saw that she was offering a four day painting retreat this summer I signed up. It was quite an adventure to get there, an 8 hour drive from my home in West Chicago to the very upper edge of Wisconsin on Lake Superior. The retreat was held at the
Wild Rice Retreat Center.
A beautiful place, well designed and run by a staff with our artistic comfort in mind. The food was excellent too. I wasn't concerned about the comforts so much (although I was pleasantly surprised) what I really wanted was to paint. Non-stop painting with oils and soaking up all the information I could. Kami is a great teacher, very personal with her instruction and I came away with lots of good ideas and lessons on color management. Here are some of the studies I did under her instruction on color relationships. It was difficult for me to do these studies and abstract the colors and shapes. I think I received more constructive criticism than I can remember since art school days. (Art Center College of Design, Pasadena California)
