Blazing foliage and sun-dappled dirt roads lined with red-gold oaks maples – wonderful fall motifs. But the ingenious work of artist Daniel Gerhartz proves you can create paintings that say “autumn” without having to depict a single branch.
Gerhartz was born 1965 in Kewaskum, Wisconsin, where he now lives with his wife Jennifer and their young children. An early interest in art led him to studies at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, Illinois. However, he says, it was his voracious appetite for museums and the international pantheon of modern masters that inspired him – painters such as John Singer Sargent, Alphonse Mucha, Nicolai Fechin, Joaquin Sorolla, Isaac Levitan, and Ilya Repin.
Indeed, an “autumn painting” can be a still life, a figure painting, a portrait, or a wildlife painting. For example, in Gerhartz’s autumn still life below, the copper kettle spilling ears of corn, surrounded by subdued blossoms and warm autumnal ochres and rusts, suggest the mellow abundance of harvest time, when the days are still warm, yet the leaves are starting to turn.
Daniel Gerhartz, an autumn arrangement, oil on canvas.
In this way, the still life paintings Gerhartz paints achieve a coherent poetic lyricism far beyond mere description.
Gerhartz occasionally paints pure landscapes, but more often than not, he prefers to populate them with figures who can suggest allegories, personifications, and various narratives while at the same time being direct representations of the model.
In the detail from his painting “The Beginning of Autumnm” below, we see a young woman (on the verge of adulthood?) among trees lit by a sunset, wearing the colors of the changing leaves. In the rest of the painting, she tilts a container full of freshly picked apples toward the viewer.
DETAIL: Daniel Gerhartz, The Beginning of Autumn, oil on canvas
“When I have been most moved and impressed by artwork, music, or any expressive art form, it has been when the work has first grabbed my soul with its poetry, then amazed my mind in its structure and construction,” Gerhartz says. “Throughout my development as a visual artist, I have found my greatest struggle in the making of art is to balance the crafting of accurate, solid forms while retaining the lyrical nature of the visual world. “
Spreading Your Wings
Turning to artist Dustin Van Wechel, we have another painter who speaks of the season with a motif other than trees. In this case, the main subject is a swan flexing its wings in late afternoon light. Of course, surrounding the bird are mellow bursts of ochre leaves, grasses, and late summer flowers. The absence of any bright blue in the painting, especially in the water (it’s reflecting the autumn colors on the bank), helps keep the whole palette warm and autumnal – all golds, faded yellow-greens, and earthy, cinnamon reds.
Dustin Van Wechel, Trumpeter Swan, oil on canvas – subject of a soon-to-be released teaching video from Streamline.
Given these cues, we can easily imagine that the sun is warm while the air is crisp with the scent of autumn leaves. A magnificent trumpeter swan, ivory feathers backlit in the golden light, evokes a sense of elegance and tranquility. You can almost hear the whisper of the water, the wings whirring in the air, and the dry leaves rustling with the wind in the grass.
Gerhartz details the process of painting “The Beginning of Autumn” in six hours of lively and eloquent video instruction.
Van Wechel’s video, Painting Wildlife: Birds and Waterfowl will be available later this month. Read more and watch a preview video here.
