Meredith Dytch

2009-11-14T08:52:00.000-08:00

City Alley 1
Oil on panel
18"x14"

2009-11-14T08:44:00.000-08:00

"Bright Lights"
Oil on panel
11"x14"

2009-09-13T18:05:00.000-07:00

Downtown Alley
Oil on Canvas
8"x8"

2009-08-27T11:29:00.000-07:00

Behind My House
Oil on Panel
18"x18"

2009-06-07T14:30:00.000-07:00

The Night Watchman

Oil on Panel
20"x24"

2009-05-24T17:39:00.000-07:00

Chelmsford Trail
Oil on Panel
12 5/8"x15 5/8"

2009-04-15T16:45:00.001-07:00

Rainy City 2

Oil on Gessoed Panel
11"x14"

2009-03-26T18:08:00.000-07:00

Rainy City 1

Oil on Gessoed Panel
11'x14"

2009-02-06T17:20:00.000-08:00

The Shortcut
Oil on Gessoed Panel
11"x14"

2009-01-25T12:16:00.000-08:00

The Back Yard
Oil on Gessoed Panel - 12"x16"

2009-01-25T10:29:00.000-08:00

"Brown Line 4 - Ravenswood"
Oil on Gessoed Panel - 12"x16"

2008-12-18T16:04:00.000-08:00

Behind the Church
Oil on Gessoed Panel
12"x14"

2008-11-25T17:25:00.000-08:00

Brown Line 5 - Under the Tracks

Oil on Gessoed Panel

13 7/8" x 10 7/8"

2008-11-22T07:43:00.000-08:00

Brown Line 3 - Passing By

Oil on Canvas

16"x20"

2008-11-09T14:38:00.000-08:00

Brown Line 1 - Ann's Corner

Oil on Gessoed Panel

12" x 15 5/8"

2008-09-28T17:10:00.000-07:00

Old Oak

12"x18"

Oil sketch on gessoed panel

2008-09-20T12:50:00.000-07:00

" Coast of Maine"

Oil on Canvas

24"x30"

2008-09-11T15:57:00.000-07:00

Paroled From the Diptheria Ward, May, 1918
Oil on Canvas
20"x30"

2008-08-05T17:24:00.000-07:00

Waiting for the Concert

Oil on Canvas (work in progress)

24"x30"

2008-06-28T13:09:00.000-07:00

Cousin Clara

Oil on Canvas

18"x14"

Work in Progress

2008-06-22T08:48:00.000-07:00

Chelmsford Forest

oil on canvas

18"x24"

2008-05-29T18:17:00.000-07:00

Bicycle Days

Oil on Canvas

16"x12"

(work in progress)

2008-05-17T15:50:00.000-07:00

Self in Green Dress

Oil on Canvas

14"x18"

2008-05-07T05:39:00.000-07:00

The Outing

Oil on Canvas

24"x18"

2008-04-20T11:32:00.000-07:00

Ladies of the Club

Oil on Canvas

24"x18"

2008-04-10T08:58:00.000-07:00

Picnic Day
Oil on Canvas

18"x24"

2008-03-16T18:52:00.000-07:00

In the Pool

oil on linen-covered wood panel

10 3/4"x14"

2008-01-16T21:38:00.000-08:00

The High-Stakes Game

Oil on Canvas

24"x18"

(Work in Progress)

2008-01-01T15:10:00.000-08:00

The Piano Player

Oil on Canvas (work in progress)

16"x20"

2007-12-24T09:01:00.000-08:00

At the Kami Shrine
oil on canvas
24"x18"

2007-12-24T08:55:00.000-08:00

The Red Pail - 1947

oil on canvas board

20"x16"

2007-11-22T12:54:00.000-08:00

Great-Aunt Otie and Uncle Charles Chisholm

Oil on canvas board

Work in Progress

2007-11-01T18:33:00.000-07:00

In the Park - 1941

Oil on Canvas

(work in progress)

2007-10-28T11:23:00.000-07:00

Spring Reflections - Chicago Botanical Gardens
oil on canvas
24"x18"

(gallery-edged)

2007-10-27T18:26:00.000-07:00

Bandelier II

oil on canvas

(work in progress)

2007-10-27T18:12:00.000-07:00

Chicago, Green Line, Pilsen

(from a photograph by Ania Banas)

oil on canvas

14"x17 3/4"

2007-10-12T05:40:00.000-07:00

Dorothy - 1942

Oil sketch on canvas paper

2007-10-12T05:38:00.000-07:00

Harvey - 1964

Oil on canvas

2007-10-12T05:24:00.000-07:00

Harvey - 1982

Oil sketch on canvas paper

Back from Boston

2007-10-05T07:37:00.001-07:00

I returned this past Saturday from a five-day painting intensive with artist Ann Christensen. It was a very worthwhile thing to have done - I think it has already had a big impact on how I paint. The funny thing was that though I thought I wanted to simplify my style (hers is very spare, with very effective use of color), this latest effort is anything but simplified. Thinking about it, I feel that what I really wanted to get rid of was a fussy obsession with detail that I don't have the technique to pull off. I tend to get bogged down in trying to paint realistically, and I really appreciated Ann's approach, which I felt liberated me to be more impressionistic (since that seems to all I can do at this point).

So I am putting to use some of the techniques she taught me, but in my own way. This sketch was done wet-to-wet, very loose, very quickly. The larger scale painting is proving a bit more difficult to pull of - I'm having to re-work it much more than the sketch. Maybe that's only to be expected.

2007-10-05T07:35:00.000-07:00

Chelmsford Forest

Oil Sketch on canvas board

11 1/2"x14 1/2"

2007-09-16T17:26:00.000-07:00

This is perhaps the first somehwat successful painting I've done entirely from imagination. I used some ideas from the copies I did of Hudson River paintings, because I love those wending rivers and distant mountains.

2007-09-16T17:23:00.000-07:00

Far River

17 3/4"x14"

Oil on canvas

2007-09-16T17:19:00.000-07:00

The painting below was done after a trip to the Chicago Botanical Gardens. This is as close as I can get to a "vista" at this time, in flat old Chicago. Though at first I didn't care for the painting because it's so "bright," I've lately come to like it - maybe because it's among the most successful of my pictures that aren't copies of someone else's work.

2007-09-16T17:14:00.000-07:00

Botanical Gardens I

24"x20"

Oil on canvas

Hudson River Scene

2007-03-18T18:27:00.000-07:00

This painting is my version of a Hudson River painting titled "Hyde Park, New York," by Johann Hermann Carmiencke, a German-born painter who spent the last 16 years of his life living and painting in New York.

My teacher suggested that I study by copying the "old masters," and for me that means the Husdon River School. I love their appreciation of the granduer of the American landscape. This painting appealed to me because of its grand vista, showing the Catskills in the distance.

2007-03-18T18:19:00.000-07:00

"Hudson River Scene"

oil on canvas

24"x20"

After a painting by Johann Hermann Carmeincke

2007-01-30T15:58:00.000-08:00

Dream Landscape II

Oil on Canvas

24"x19 3/4"

Work in Progress

2007-01-14T11:22:00.000-08:00

The Dream Landscapes are a new direction for me - they grow out my little 5-minute oil sketches that are spontaneous - that come entirely from my imagination (my subconscious?) and are not based (as far as I know) on any real landscape that I've ever seen. They're the means by which I hope to touch some emotional center that has been so hard for me to reach. Sometimes I think they're about loneliness.

2007-01-14T11:19:00.000-08:00

Dream Landscape I

oil on canvas

20"x16"

2006-11-12T12:02:00.000-08:00

Recently I have been taking oil painting classes with Didier Nolet, a local landscape artist. I feel that I'm learning a great deal. In addition to technique, perhaps the most important thing I'm learning is how to see. I think that's the real difference between a professional and a beginner: the beginner still doesn't know what to focus in on. We so take for granted what our eyes see, and we don't know how to focus on the things that make a difference - the softness of a distant hillside, the coolness of the shaded lawn, the touch of pink in the reflected sky.

Technique is important, but it's only a part of the whole. I need to learn what to see.

2006-11-12T11:41:00.000-08:00

Versailles II - Garden of Zeus
Oil on Canvas
18"x13 3/4"

2006-08-27T14:25:00.000-07:00

At Camiso
Oil on Canvas

I removed this painting because I felt that it was "anecdotal." The figure made it look like a snapshot (which it was - I copied a vacation snapshot taken at Camiso when we were visiting Bandelier). I now look for more emotional content in what I paint. At some point, most, if not all of these paintings will be removed - as more mature ones take their place.

2006-08-21T11:14:00.000-07:00

2006-08-21T11:04:00.000-07:00

The Beach at Sherwin

(preliminary oil sketch on canvas)

2006-08-17T09:40:00.000-07:00

Bandelier I

Oil on Canvas (work in progress)

2006-08-16T12:15:00.000-07:00

Twilight on the River (after a painting by Margaret Kessler)

Oil on Canvas

What I do

2006-08-16T12:00:00.000-07:00

I always thought I was a mis-directed writer - that writing was my greatest talent, and I should have been doing that all my life. But as a child, I was as much involved in drawing and painting as I was in writing. I recently realized that it's to painting that I should return. I made a deliberate decision when I was a teenager not to pursue the creative life - it seemed to me to be emotionally draining - possibly all the emotional ups and downs of being a teenager made me long for a more settled life - at any rate, I never pursued art. Now I get pleasure from the few sucesses I have - for example, if the water actually looks like water, or if the clouds actually look like couds. Yes, there are frustrations, but I am better able to take them in stride.