Featured Artist Ober-Rae Starr Livingstone

Canadian artist Ober-Rae Starr Livingstone presents a collection of serene and ethereal landscapes, thoughtfully created. See more of his portfolio on his website.

 

 

I’m a self-taught artist who started as an abstract painter, but began doing representational work about 35 years ago. I love painting the landscape, especially the sky at sunrise and sunset. Landscape painting, to me, feels like an attempt to recognize and express gratitude for the beauty we have been given.

 

 

In those moments that happen at times when one is painting and everything seems to be flowing and working with little or no conflict, one can feel a connection to the Divine. I look at great landscape paintings and know that they have the power to bring a moment of peace and even a feeling of awe at the beauty of the natural world. They may even remind the viewer of special times and experiences in his or her life.

 

 

I work in both oil and acrylic. I painted with oils for the first several years and then switched to using acrylics exclusively for about 35 years. In the last few years I have been switching back and forth between the two mediums and am beginning to experiment with gouache.  Studio work has been the main focus of my work for all the years I have been painting but a few years ago I added working en plein air to open up new possibilities for the improvement of my work.

 

 

My studio paintings almost always go through significant changes. I tend to work very intuitively and put paint down, and then make constant changes to get to a point where things feel right. I might start from a photograph but end up making so many changes that, in most cases, a year or two later I wouldn’t be able to say which photograph I used for a particular painting.

 

 

It is not unusual for me to put 30 hours or more into a painting, then feel it’s stuck and paint out a large portion of it in order to find a path to complete the painting. I find that, for me, it’s necessary to keep a lot of energy and feeling moving to create a decent painting and not to get fussy about small things. It’s the feeling of work that is important to me. I lose the feeling if I get consumed trying to figure things out and control the painting. That is why I work with acrylics most of the time in my studio work—they allow for quick changes.

 

 

A quote by Marc Chagall expresses what I feel about my painting process for the most part: “If I create from the heart, nearly everything works. If from the head, almost nothing.”

 

 

My work has been published in numerous magazines and books. These include Plein Air Magazine, Fine Art Connoisseur, the Artists Magazine, the Acrylic Artists Magazine, the International Artists Magazine, The North Light books AcrylicWorks 4 and AcrylicWorks 5, and the French publication Practique des Arts, among others.

 

 

I was invited in 2022 and 2024 to be on the faculty, and do demonstrations in acrylic, for the Plein Air Convention and Expo. It is the largest gathering of plein air painters in the world.

 

 

I’m on the Board of Directors and a Signature Member of the National Oil and Acrylic Painters Society. Additionally, I am a past Board Member of Artcite, an artist run and government funded art gallery in Windsor, Ontario, Canada where I live.

 

Ober-Rae Starr Livingstone invites you to follow on Facebook and Instagram.

 

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