River Bottom Land

Season's Change

@9" x 16"

Pastel

Casey Klahn

Look for several new works to be posted over the next few days.  I will post them here first!

River Land Air

River Land in Diffusion

7" x 5"

Pastel

Casey Klahn

The Suggested River

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Treetops River

3.25" x 13.75"

Pastel

Casey Klahn

flat file sale, unframed

$200

how to buy

New Large Artwork - Happy Thansgiving

Shadow River

11" x 19"

Pastel & Charcoal

Casey Klahn

Thanksgiving blessings to all.  

I Saw You

I Saw You

Small

Pastel

Casey Klahn

Raining in this picture.  Eric Satie knows the feeling, and expresses it in the video.

Not Available.

Red & Violet Something Different

Red & Violet Corner River

9.75" x 9"

Pastel

Casey Klahn

See the page: Pressroom, for news about my on-demand workshops.

The wet scene above demands a rain song video. Whaaaaa-yahlluhhhh Greeeen Rivah!

Fluid Corner River

Fluid Corner

19.5" x 13.75"

Pastel

Casey Klahn

With the river scenes also comes a music video with the theme of rain.  Water is everywhere in these images:  in the sky; in the trees; in your hair.

Fauvist Forest

Fauvist Forest

12.3" x 10.75"

Pastel

Casey Klahn

Riverside Grays

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Riverside Grays

@6" x 6"

Pastel

Casey Klahn

We're exploring my new works along with songs about the rain.  Enjoy.  Tom Waits Rain Dogs is anything but dogmatic, but it does bring the rain.

Rainy Day Rivers - No Sunshine For You!

The Rain, the Light & the River

11.75" x 18.25"

Pastel

Casey Klahn

The last time I posted about the rainy river, in beautiful Hoquiam, Washington, is here.  This painting is the companion piece.


Someday, the sun won't shine for you.  Or, that's what Jethro Tull said, anyway.  You know how it is.

Painting The Rain & The River

It's Raining in this picture.  Get it?

I'm Not Sure I Posted This One Right Side Up

Blue Bank River

5.6" x 8.1"

Pastel

Casey Klahn

New Image - Hoquiam River

Tree River

14.6" x 19"

Pastel

Casey Klahn

Links and Studio News

November 15 in the Studio, Hoquiam River Scenes
Casey Klahn

Jeanette Jobson, who does Gyotaku Prints, has published an interview of me at her newsletter. Jeanette blogs at Illustrated Life. Go here to find out about my studio secrets.

Katherine Tyrrell, of Making a Mark, has linked me on her popular Sunday feature, "Who's Made a Mark This Week." If you don't already make a habit of reading her Sunday entries, you should. I consider it the artist blogger news.

Here at The Colorist, I am continuing to think about The Artist's Ideas. If you haven't found your answers as to what your art ideas should be, that's good. Keep looking, and use my essays as fuel for your thoughts.

Also, in the world of blogging, I wonder who will become my three-hundredth follower? Next month will be the fourth anniversary of The Colorist, and I think you can appreciate the effort that requires. I appreciate each reader at my humble artist's blog.

I am becoming active at the ning community, Artistes de Studio. Jennifer Evenhus, a great artist from central Washington, is the driving force there. I enjoy the status of a Master Artist in the group.

Studio Panorama

In the studio, I am going forward with the long awaited Hoquiam River Series. Consider it like Twilight, only more moody. My representation of the rainy, coastal little river is a passage I am making by means of strong pastel paintings. Are these paintings of one of the most interesting places on Earth good representations of the scenery there? Only if you look at them through the heart.

I hope to have an opening in Hoquiam, my hometown, some time next year.

River Red at The New Daily Blog

River Corner, Red
3.5" x 3.75"
Pastel
Casey Klahn

This is my personal favorite from my new miniature series. See these new works posted at The Colorist Daily.

Feel free to Follow Me via the tool at the bottom of the blog.

I Have a New Card

My Card

Over the horizon, I am planning for a set of exhibits, in my coastal hometown of Hoquiam, Washington. Mayor Jack Durney wants me to hurry up and exhibit, and has named it "The Return of the Native." To sweeten the deal, he has offered me a Get Out of Jail Free Card. There's a first time for everything - thanks, Mr. Mayor!

Hoquiam River Bright

10" x 14.75"

Pastel & Charcoal

Casey Klahn

On the near horizon, I am exhibiting in a new show in Kirkland, Kirkland Uncorked. The hours are as follows: Kirkland Uncorked Promenade (Free Festival) WA, July 16 - 18. Hours: Friday 2pm-8pm • Saturday 11am-8pm • Sunday 11am-6pm

This coming Labor Day, I will be exhibiting in Sausalito. September 3 - 6. Last year, I received the First Place Award in Drawing at the Sausalito Art Festival. That was for my whole collection, rather than a single image. The pressure is on to be that good again, but if my wife is a fair critic, she has deemed this year's art as better. I hope that's true.

How about it, Sausalito? Will you offer me a Get Out of Jail free card, too?

Hometown River Series

Hoquiam River Bright

10" x 14.75"

Pastel & Charcoal

Casey Klahn

pas camera

Hoquiam River Bright is equal parts imagination, observation, and things I learned from WK (you know who that is - I don't spell it out because the crawler brings people here when I do).  I have been having quite a time getting some river pilings in that don't look dorky or sentimental, and then one day I think I figured it out. 

Memorials and Memories

Pause

Sometimes a guy needs to pause and reflect.  "...a guy."  That's a phrase my late dad used to say.  His youngest brother recently passed away, and I said words and a prayer at his memorial on Saturday.  Uncle Don was 82, and is survived by only one sister, my Aunt Anita.  Don was preceded in death by his siblings.  All eleven of them.  The story of my grandparents, their thirteen children and their pioneering life is a unique American one.  Uncle Don's is unique, too.

Grandpa Max and Grandma Anna homesteaded in the land that time forgot, the Olympic Peninsula.  Think Twilight, only without the amenities.  By no amenities, I mean no electricity.  Did I mention no road, either?  Max hiked the Olympic beach to get to work during the Great Depression, which was a hundred miles plus a little.  The Indians rafted him across the rivers he couldn't ford.  He worked in the logging and port towns of Hoquiam and Aberdeen.

Max and Anna had 13 children, and the seven brothers all went off to war.  My father, Kenneth K. Klahn, saw heavy combat in Italy.  The youngest boy, Don, wanted badly to get in the army and fight the Second World War with his six brothers, but the Sole Survivor Policy prevented that.  So, he got drafted and fought the Korean War instead.  How is that for irony?  I can't say if my seven serving uncles and father is an unprecedented thing, but it is noteworthy.  Where will we get men like that now?

Link
My Grandfather, Max Klahn, is the young boy pictured @ the top right. Next to him at his left are Henry, my Great Grandfather and Charlotte, my Great Grandmother. Location: Quillayute Prairie, WA. Date: 1895. This place is about the rainiest spot in the US.

This weekend, in my home town of Hoquiam , I wanted to continue my series of paintings about the river complex.  Of course, it rained and so I sat in the truck and drew the mist on trees.  I made further arrangements for a show of these works and checked out the venues from the curb.  It will be a special event, I am sure.  The tentative date is a year from September.

My Hoquiam High School class of 1976 have found each other on Facebook, and 25 of us and some family and friends got re-acquainted in Olympia Saturday evening.  One thing we enjoyed so much in the seventies was dancing to loud rock and roll.  How sore can a guy be after dancing and making merry like we did that night?  Ouch.  I haven't had that much fun in a long time.  Every face I saw recalled for me endless good times and fun that we had in our school days.

I was to get together with another high school and college friend on Sunday.  We made the arrangements to meet because his wife was undergoing cancer treatments and he wouldn't be able to come out.  When I called that morning he informed me that his wife had passed away Friday night in the hospital in Seattle.

Can a guy have a fuller heart than I have right now?  I doubt it.  I am back home with my family, today.  I showed Lorie some photos that my aunt gave me when I visited with her.  Aunt Geri and I sat at the dining table, in front of the big corner windows that Uncle Don looked out of for so many years in Hoquiam.  Looking out at the rain, of course.  The week he died, he "saw" my late father as clear as day, she said.  He remarked, "here comes Kenny.  He's coming for me now."

Rest in peace, Melanie, Don, Dad and the Klahn siblings.  I love you.

Top Photo: Lorie Klahn

River Honesty

River in Browns
7.5" x 16"
Pastel and Charcoal
Casey Klahn

In the service of honesty, let's admit that the river isn't always cheery and sun-kissed. Rain happens.

The ferry is boarding. Rockferry, that is. Here's Welsh singer Duffy, with guitarist Bernard Butler, giving us an intimate, "hold the sauce," session of her melancholy tune.







The singer Duffy is from North Wales. Rugged land, geographic isolation and a don't-mess-with-me attitude are things shared by my home town of Hoquiam and the NorthWelsh. I have only ever met one person from North Wales, but that still shows you it's a small world, huh?

Being Coastal

The family and I are on the coast for a vacation. The Pacific Ocean, no small feature, is built-in to my psyche. My father and my mother, Nadine, raised me here until I was about 1 year old. Mom was born and raised at the beach. She subsisted for times on clams, and washed my diapers in the iron ore streams that empty to the ocean. I'm told that made them red.

Here is my last post where I drew these pictures of the jetty. Hopefully, I'll have a few plein air images to post of the beach, and of the Hoquiam River, soon.

Time to relax, now.