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Detail from one panel (6'X6') contemporary landscape painting Possum Trot Hill.

FAQ:

"What are these pictures doing here? Are they by the same person?  Who tamed that Wild Thing I read about with the splashing and scrubbing and having a good time?"

Those are a few of the questions about this page and similar observations heard by the folks at DragonFire Gallery in Cannon Beach, where a range of my paintings are shown. The following is an inside look at the day to day life of JoAnn Chartier, artist, writer, human being:

I look out the window across the valley toward the Coast Range and am transfixed by a certain cast of light or cloud formation or the colors of trees and farm fields changing in season.  It's beautiful and challenging as it is. I get out my oils and a small canvas and lay in a quick study with painting knife and brush.

I go to Florence or Yachats and walk on the beach, caught by the tranquil or the stormy experience between the sea and the sky as they meet the planes and angles of the earth. I take pictures and go home to my little back room studio and try to capture the big picture on an 11X14 canvas.

I go to my big studio in Corvallis where the skylight pours the changing angle of the sun or the brilliantly even illumination of cloud cover across a big canvas. My hand recalls the angle of a tree, the slope of a beach, the texture of a rock because it has been tuned up by workouts in "reality" using the oil paint that I was introduced to at age 12. It's like going home, and it is useful because it keeps my hand and eye trained in observation and execution of ideas, and new thoughts grow out of mundane practice. Ballet dancers always go back to the barre, musicians go back to scales, I go back to oils and landscape or still life to stay in shape for the appearance of the Wild Thing. I want to take full advantage of that inspiring surge of energy, and to do that I have to know that my hand will make a shape or mix a color or break a line because I've stayed in training.

To collectors out there who have purchased my paintings and wonder why I don't stick to one thing -- well, my "one thing" covers a lot of territory. You may see iconic Haystack Rock at Cannon Beach or the South Jetty at Florence or the North Fork of Siuslaw River in the pictures here, and sometimes you may sense them in the alternate reality series or the creation series or any number of other things that haven't come to fruition yet in the creative spaces I inhabit. One of these days I will get the amazing greens of winter and spring in the Willamette Valley  just right and the five years and more that I've put in exploring those seasons will arrive at the gallery, and a couple of the best studies will show up here on my website because I'm happy with them and their place in my universe.

Discussing Possum Trot diptych (6'X12') at an open studio

Orchard Point, Fern Ridge Reservoir  24x30 Acrylic

Fern Ridge October  45x51 Acrylic

South Jetty and Yachats  11x14 (oil)

N Siuslaw River 40X38 oil

Cheshire Fields  36X36