Abstract Tornado Fire Painting Inspiration and Art

Video showing inspiration and abstract art through expressionism

How do you express creatively what you feel when you feel inside? Imagination and existential forces creates the inspiration. The brush fires season has started up again and is a reminder of the Thomas Fire that came close to us and impacted so many lives a couple of years ago. “Firenado” is an attempt to capture that ‘feeling inside” in an abstract expressionist style of the fire tornadoes. By painting it abstractly it seems more real to me. I am trying to get to the core of what it is. I’m trying to paint the emotion of the sky and the fire storm in this contemporary painting, And the only way that it seems possible to do is to make it modern and abstract it - and then it seems more authentic to try and paint the excitement of it.

Abstract – semi-abstract Art

I title a lot of my abstract art as if they were landscapes. This is the way I actually see and think about them. To me, they are landscape paintings but I know others may not see the same things in them that I do. You may look at the painting and associate the image from something in your memory - recognizing a shape or form or color that reminds you of things past.

Impressionism Art Wildling Museum Exhibition

Wildling Installation Artist John Robertson 1.jpg

I like to go out into the countryside and create these small impressionism paintings. It’s a true busman’s holiday to take tine away from studio painting to do other paintings.  That is what an artist’s life can be like.  What I do for a living is also what I like to do for fun. It is a good break away from the demanding large scale sports paintings that I created in my studio.  

  Wildling  Museum Art Exhibition

 Currently the Wildling Museum in Solvang, Ca. is showing 65 of my small landscapes and seascapes paintings in a group show called “Bio/Mass'” Quote from the Wildling Museum; “Our upcoming exhibition, 'Bio/Mass' will feature an inspiring group of eleven contemporary artists who have transformed their fascination with deep observations of their individual environments into works that help us to see the beauty in the details of our world, celebrating both quiet and dramatic moments in nature”. My wife, Lynn Hanson @indigopond on instagram is included in the show.  Currently the museum only has public walk-In hours: Saturday - Sunday, 11 A.M. - 4 P.M but, hopefully they will soon be opened on weekdays too. 

wildling Museum 22 Distant Winds 9 x 10 oil artist John Robertson.jpg

 I live close to farm fields and rural countryside so I like to go out and create “en plein air paintings” and as others refer to my impressionistic painting, alla prima. Alla prima painting is described as technique in which the painting (usually painted from life) is completed in one sitting or while the paint is still wet. Painting in this manner is a break from the art created in the confines of my studio

Art News Museum Show Opening

 My landscape art is being installed at the Wildling Museum in Solvang, Ca. for an upcoming group show.  I will have 65 small, expressive and impressionistic landscape paintings in the art opening exhibition.  

Quote from the Wildling Museum; “Our upcoming exhibition, 'Bio/Mass' will feature an inspiring group of eleven contemporary artists who have transformed their fascination with deep observations of their individual environments into works that help us to see the beauty in the details of our world, celebrating both quiet and dramatic moments in nature”. No date is set but they anticipate a late April opening and will be on exhibit until September 2021.

 The nature of the art is plein air using the alla prima technique of wet on wet painting.  Materials are oil on unstretched and treated canvas.  The art ranges from 2 inches by 3 inches up to 12” x 12 inches by 16 inches.