BY KAREN BOSSICK
Tina McCombs has always loved miniature things. Growing up in Southern California she was totally into a room full of miniatures at Knott's Berry Farm amusement park.
So, when a friend asked her to paint a scene from their dock for a wedding invitations, she began painting in miniatures using a size 1 brush and never looked back.
“I’m nearsighted so I can’t see far away at all. But I can see up close real good. I love painting miniature landscapes, using dollhouse windows as frames,” she said. “My paintings are not made to go on a wall—they’re better on a desk. I want to bring all that is out there into a little space.”
McCombs’ line of tiny paintings featuring local landscapes and local wildlife from foxes to crows in snow are framed in tiny frames that can be quite ornate.
Some of them can be seen at Leadville Espresso where McCombs, a 35-year resident of the Wood River Valley has collaborated with Tina Cole, another longtime resident of the valley, for a month-long exhibit titled “Peaceable Kingdom.”
The two artists will be present at an opening for their exhibition from 5 to 8 p.m. Friday, July 7, during the July Gallery Walk at Leadville Espresso House, 411 N. Leadville Ave.
McCombs’ work, which includes snake fences, cabins, bluebirds and more, dovetails nicely with that of Cole’s who has been taking portable sketch and watercolor block books into the mountains surrounding Sun Valley and Stanley for 45 years.
Cole, who was born in Japan, studied both painting and printmaking at the University of Washington. But, after graduating, she majored en plein air, drawing and painting on site during outdoor treks around the world.
Last fall she decided to revisit her love of printmaking at Jennifer Galpin’s Vitae Brevis Press studio in Hailey, working alongside other local artists such as Margery Friedlander and Gay Odmark as she created one-of-a-kind monotypes based on her original watercolor drawings.
She spends an entire day in the print studio, tracing her drawings, mixing colors and running her “canvases” through rollers.
“Everything is in reverse so I have to do everything backwards,” she said. “You can really do a ton of things to these.”
The show at Leadville Espresso House includes a pen and ink drawing, watercolor drawings and the monotypes. Most are of the Pioneer Mountains overlooking Sun Valley and Ketchum.
“I love the Pioneers. They’re my close-to-home go-to mountains,” said Cole. “I’ve done drawings in all four seasons during simple day hikes or climbs or even from a viewpoint across the way as I’m skiing. The mountains are like people—they’re mountains but each has their own personalities.”
Cole likes painting en plein air because it’s quick. At the same time, taking the time to draw or paint on site has cemented moments and scenes in Cole’s memory.
“It’s like writing in a journal, only you’re drawing it,” she said. “I look at my paintings and drawings and I can remember exactly who I was with, where I sat, the temperature it was when I was drawing. When you take a photograph it’s so quick that you can’t always remember any of that. And taking the time to sit and draw has helped me to see lines and ridges I might have never noticed had I just given it a quick glance.”
Cole loves showing her work with McCombs.
“Her work is so magical and it draws you in from afar despite its small size,” she said. “She sold a couple pieces as they were hanging the show!”