Christchurch Cathedral Gallery 2014

Purpose of Show

This show is presented to summarize the development of the painter through the “first-half” of his painting development.

There is a saying among painters that: “You’re 1000th painting will be good.”

Joe Synan has been painting for more than a decade. While there is no precise count of his paintings, and estimate is that he has completed approximately 500 paintings.

Artist Background

About a dozen years ago, Joe Synan mentioned to his good friend, the late Margaret Skidmore, that he was interested in pulling out his watercolor paints that had been in his attic for about 40 years. In college, he briefly majored in architecture, had acquired some watercolor paints and brushes, and made a few watercolor paintings. Margaret, then the Development Director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, arranged for Joe to begin classes at the Museum’s Glassell School, enrolled in Arthur Turner’s beginning watercolor class. Arthur is the Dean of Houston watercolor instructors, and he has has coached hundreds of people into a professional painting career. Joe is now enrolled for the 20th semester in the beginning watercolor class.

Gallery Guide

This guide has been prepared to give a brief perspective on the paintings in the exhibit. Please use the guide as you view the paintings. You may keep the guide if you wish. If you do not, please return it for others to use.

Painting Categories

1. Self-portraits – These give a brief introduction to the artist by outlining, in paintings, his career path and his special interests.

2. Wildflowers – This series of paintings includes paintings of wildflowers, flowering vines, and tree blossoms. All of these are native to South Texas. Most of these were painted from artist’s photographs in the woods around his home in Kingwood

3. Wildlife – This series features native wildlife in South Texas. These were painted from the artist’s photographs.

4. Lighthouses – The artist has painted the lighthouses of Texas and other lighthouses from around the country. Some of these lighthouses no longer exist and the artist has reconstructed colored images from historic black-and-white photographs.

5. Map paintings – This series features some collaged paintings with watercolor images overlaying map cutouts. The later paintings utilize a large format printer to print map images on high-quality watercolor paper, followed by over painting of watercolor images.

6. New England – The artist has had a number of experiences painting New England landscapes, having taken painting classes on Cape Cod (Truro and Chatham) and painting classes at Snow Farm Art Camp in central Massachusetts.

Category

Title

Narrative

Details

Self Portraits

Two Roads Diverged…

Every so often Arthur Turner gives a homework assignment of a “self-portrait”. I have often seen my life and career as a series of crossroads where “I took the road less traveled by”, after the Robert Frost poem.

Symbols

Another frequent Arthur Turner assignment is a “self-portrait” represented symbolically.

Wildflowers

(wildflowers, flowering vines, tree blossoms)

Lyre leaf Sage I

This is a common wildflower that is very prevalent in the early spring. It grows abundantly in the green space behind our back yard. Each of the blooms is very small but when many of them are present a light blue hue spreads across the field. This is an early painting when my interest in wildflowers was just beginning

Lyre leaf Sage II

This is a common wildflower that is very prevalent in the early spring. It grows abundantly in the green space behind our back yard. Each of the blooms is very small but when many of them are present a light blue hue spreads across the field.

Texas Thistle I

This is a classic Texas wildflower and it adorns the cover of my Wildflowers of Texas handbook. This meeting earned an honorable mention at a monthly competition at the Watercolor Art Society Houston

Texas Thistle II

This is a Texas staple. It is, surprisingly, in the sunflower family.

Trumpet Vine I

This is formally known as the common trumpet creeper. It blooms all summer and is one of the last vines to be in bloom in our neighborhood. This was painted from a photograph taken late in the summer.

Morning Glory

This was on the bank of a creek in Kingwood. I had a chance to photograph it in the early morning light.

Wood Sorrell

This is one of the earliest wildflowers to appear in the springtime in my neighborhood.

Grancy Gray Beard

This small tree blossom is also known as the Old Man’s Beard. It occurs in late March in Kingwood. It is not very prevalent, but I have scouted at a few locations that I find every springtime.

Crossvine

This is a very attractive and prevalent vine in the woods in Kingwood. It is one of the earlier blooms.

Lantana

This is one of the more interesting wildflowers, because of the great detail of the flower. It is quite prevalent in Kingwood. It blooms for a long time from spring into summer. I have even seen is blooming in the early autumn.

Honeysuckle

This is the native honeysuckle. Most of what is seen in Kingwood is the invasive Japanese variety

Mist Flower

I had a business trip to the Rio Grande Valley and had the chance to take an afternoon walk in a nature preserve. There were hundreds of monarch butterflies. There were also thousands of the small blue mist flowers to the delight of the butterflies.

Turk’s Cap

This is a relatively subtle wildflower in the Kingwood woods.

Snowdrop Tree

This is a very subtle spring blooming tree. The snowdrops are relatively small. In the deep woods in Kingwood many trees have been eliminated by the drought and by a tornado a few years back. But they are being replaced by the snowdrop tree. Last spring I counted 76 snowdrop trees in a two-mile stretch of path.

Sunflower

This is a very prevalent South Texas flower. This image was painted in North Carolina at the John Campbell School where I have taken many painting courses.

Redbud Tree

This is a favorite tree of landscapers in the Kingwood area. But there are a few “natural” Redbud trees growing deep in the woods. It is a thrill to find this every springtime. This was painted from a photograph taken with late afternoon light in the woods.

Carolina Jazmine

In the Kingwood area, this may be the first sign of spring. I have actually seen these began to bloom before January 1. These lines may be high up in the trees and you can only tell their presence by the yellow petals that adorn the running trails in the woods.

Goldenrod

This is an autumn blooming flower which is abundant in Kingwood. It probably is responsible for the well-being of a number of physicians specializing in allergies.

Texas Wildflower Triptych

These are the iconic Texas wildflowers. They were painted at a course at Anderson Ranch art school in Colorado. The technique utilized Photoshop images and water media painting.

Favorite Spring Vines

This vertical painting captures three favorite spring vines which grow in the Kingwood woods: the Wisteria, the Carolina Jasmine, and the Trumpet Vine.

Favorite Spring Blossoms

This horizontal painting captures three favorite spring blossoms which grow in the Kingwood woods: Crabapple tree, Grancy graybeard, and snowdrop tree

Wildlife

Green Anole

This character was hanging on the side of a red sheet metal barn at a friend’ s house in East Texas. He just wanted to be painted!

Squirrel

This little guy kept watching me try and photograph him. I was visiting a friend in East Texas. I enjoyed trying to capture his fur with watercolor painting.

Greylag Goose

Over the years a small collection of these geese have always been present on the small lake behind our house. But the population has now diminished to only one.

Snowy Egret

Hardly a day goes by when you cannot find one of these gorgeous egrets standing at water’s edge on the small lake which is behind our house in Kingwood.

Sea Turtle

This was painted from a photograph that my son took with his underwater camera in Hawaii while he was scuba diving. He encountered many of these and swam along with them to his delight (we are not sure about their delight).

Frog

This is the classic tree frog that we have frequently seen right outside our back window in Kingwood. Every once in a while they will plasterthemselves against the window, posing for a close-up.

Lighthouses

Nauset Light at Cape Cod

This is the iconic Cape Cod lighthouse that is pictured on the Cape Cod Potato Chip bag. We have made many visits here. I took the photograph while wading in the surf, looking back at the lighthouse which sits atop the eroding hillside.

Texas Lighthouses

This horizontal alignment presents all of the historic Texas lighthouses. This style was copied after paintings found in Chatham, Massachusetts art galleries, where all of the Cape Cod lighthouses are similarly presented.

Texas Lighthouses – Map Painting

This is another representation of the nine historical lighthouses along the Texas coast. It was painted over a portion of an old highway map that was collaged onto the watercolor paper

Brazos River Light

Sabine Point Light

Sabine Bank

Half-moon Light

Half Moon

Galveston Jetty Light

Map paintings

The Wonders of Utah

This is one of a series of paintings made to capture some of the favorite places I have visited. The map was collaged and painted over with watercolors.

Texas Lighthouses

I cut out the Texas Gulf Coast from a state travel map, and painted vignettes of the historic Texas lighthouses. The nerd in me required me to identify the geographic location of each of these lighthouses.

New Mexico White Sands

Recently I have acquired a large format printer which enables me to print images onto high-quality watercolor paper. A recent visit to White Sands national Monument inspired this painting.

Utah Delicate Arch

Recently I have acquired a large format printer which enables me to print images onto high-quality watercolor paper. We have visited this location and had many photographs. We have also climbed the mountain peak in the background (in the summer time).

Texas Guadalupe Peak

Recently I have acquired a large format printer which enables me to print images onto high-quality watercolor paper. I have had 2 hiking trips to this peak, the highest point in Texas, over the years.

Ohio Covered Bridges

Recently I have acquired a large format printer which enables me to print images onto high-quality watercolor paper. The state of Ohio has done in relatively good job of preserving and promoting its historic covered bridges. I have visited many of these. I always find them an attractive subject for painting.

Go to sleep him him him him New England

Babbling Brook I

We took a summer art course at Snow Farm in central Massachusetts. My instructor encouraged me to use more dramatic colors in my watercolor paintings. Just behind our painting studio was this babbling brook with well worn rocks. I painted this on location.

Babbling Brook II

We took a summer art course at Snow Farm in central Massachusetts. My instructor encouraged me to use more dramatic colors in my watercolor paintings. Just behind our painting studio was this babbling brook with well worn rocks. I painted this on location.

Cape Cod Tidal Bog I

I have taken a few summer art courses at the Truro Art Center on Cape Cod. One course involved the use of pigment sticks for painting. These are solid (but gooey) sticks of highly concentrated oil painting pigment. As a result, the colors are very dramatic. We used these sticks to paint on glass, and then backed up the glass with white paper. What resulted was an abstract landscape.

Cape Cod Tidal Bog II

I have taken a few summer art courses at the Truro Art Center on Cape Cod. One course involved the use of pigment sticks for painting. These are solid (but gooey) sticks of highly concentrated oil painting pigment. As a result, the colors are very dramatic. We used these sticks to paint on glass, and then backed up the glass with white paper. What resulted was an abstract landscape.

Cape Cod Tidal Bog III

I have taken a few summer art courses at the Truro Art Center on Cape Cod. One course involved the use of pigment sticks for painting. These are solid (but gooey) sticks of highly concentrated oil painting pigment. As a result, the colors are very dramatic. We used these sticks to paint on glass, and then backed up the glass with white paper. What resulted was an abstract landscape.

Cape Cod Tidal Bog IV

I have taken a few summer art courses at the Truro Art Center on Cape Cod. One course involved the use of pigment sticks for painting. These are solid (but gooey) sticks of highly concentrated oil painting pigment. As a result, the colors are very dramatic. We used these sticks to paint on glass, and then backed up the glass with white paper. What resulted was an abstract landscape.

Cape Cod Tidal Bog V

I have taken a few summer art courses at the Truro Art Center on Cape Cod. One course involved the use of pigment sticks for painting. These are solid (but gooey) sticks of highly concentrated oil painting pigment. As a result, the colors are very dramatic. We used these sticks to paint on glass, and then backed up the glass with white paper. What resulted was an abstract landscape.