A Painter's Days

December Frost

2011-12-07T19:27:00.000-05:00

December Frost

oil on panel 14" x 14"

It just seems these old trees have witnessed time stretching back for decades - they are evidence of energy and moisture and time accrued. The struggle to record the gesture and weight, to come to terms with the space and volume at times seem to be a kind of homage to the trees and the time they represent. This brings to mind a quote of Willem de Kooning's, "It seems that a lot of artists, when they get older, they feel their own miracle in nature, a feeling of being on the other side of nature."

2011-12-01T22:18:00.000-05:00

October Day

oil on canvas 28" x 44"

It has been a couple of weeks since my last post - we've been to two weddings and a funeral and of course Thanksgiving with family and so on. Plus, I have been framing work for two up coming exhibits - I'll have three paintings in the December / Holiday show at ArtSquare in Leesburg, Virginia. Everyone is invited to opening night, next Friday, December 9th - starting at 6:30 in the evening. Also in Leesburg, I'll have 15 paintings at the Loudoun County Courthouse beginning January 10th through the end of February. Lots of new things there - which I am now wrestling into frames! So very busy and glad of it, I guess - I'm looking forward to it all slowing down soon and a more regular pattern of painting and posting and writing about it all.

Early October Day

2011-11-06T17:46:00.000-05:00

Early October Day

oil on panel 12" x 18"

A little, non-descript corner of a field that seemed to me to hold all of Autumn within it's space. I'm always drawn to the ragged edges of the land - the places not filled in and neglected - if one looks closely enough the old fence lines and depressions left from old buildings' foundations can still be found.

View of the Potomac From Murray Hill

2011-11-05T08:02:00.000-04:00

View of the Potomac From Murray Hill

oil on panel 12" x 16"

A new perspective of the river from high on a bluff - I'm more used to floating in my rowboat down there among these islands. This view was afforded my workshop group a couple of Saturdays ago by the nice people at Murray Hill, a beautiful estate right on the edge of Leesburg, Virginia. We had the run of the place for two glorious days and it was very special.

Fall Day, Near Leesburg

2011-11-04T09:31:00.000-04:00

Fall Day, Near Leesburg

oil on panel 9" x 16"

A simple visual poem attempting to capture a day full of movement and color and change. The best paintings, it seems to me, are the ones in which the painter suspends any drive to control or order the world and commits to simply struggling to grab hold of a small part of the chaos. Willem deKooning was an independant and contentious fellow, never trusting artist-types who espoused an abstract / transcendant theory of what paintings should look like. Instead he wrote, 'the best we can hope for is to bring some order to ourselves'. He never could say where his work would go until he entered the process - the commitment and faith in the process without regard to finished product. Such work looks to me to carry an intensity and freshness that is intrinsic and everlasting.

Lake Afternoon

2011-10-22T07:15:00.000-04:00

Lake Afternoon

oil on canvas 9" x 12"

Another one made standing on the dock, trying to breath the space and light right on to the canvas - without worrying about what things are. Sound crazy? Well once one detaches oneself from judgement, hesitation, fear of failure or imitation - and one embraces the moment and the place as revealed in value, color, and shape - the impossible can happen and the spirit of that place appears as if by magic. Hope this one takes you to the lake on a late afternoon in September, on a magical day.

A Road In Maine

2011-10-18T21:09:00.000-04:00

A Road In Maine

oil on canvas 28" x 38"

When I look at this one now, I wish I could go back and stand there on such a day. Maybe that is the large part of making a painting - one tries to compress a process measured in hours down to a precious moment, even as every molecule in the field of vision constantly changes. Maybe also, getting lost in the process of painting for a few hours allows one to forget the passage of time that will not allow that moment to happen again. A painter must always move forward while fighting to hold on to something already gone. I had an opportunity to look at some of Edward Hopper's paintings a couple of weeks ago and I think that is the impact of his work - the essence of an awareness of irretrievable time past.

2011-10-03T17:34:00.001-04:00

Moosehorn River, Late Afternoon

oil on panel 12" x 15"

Funny thing, the refuge is mis-named, Moose have antlers not horns - probably left over from early white settlers' mistake. The river meanders past where I had settled to work over a couple of days - I could look in any direction and see another good subject. After normal everyday electronic saturated life, the absolute quiet and huge scale of the space were intense - and hard to leave after a few days. Hope these paintings bring a little of that peace home with me for you. Of course, if you're ever interested in owning any of these works, simply get in touch.

Moosehorn Afternoon

2011-10-01T21:15:00.000-04:00

Moosehorn Afternoon

oil on panel 9"x 12"

The Moosehorn National wildlife Refuge is close by our lake, its a huge swath of land that runs parallel to the lake along the side towards the Canadian border. I would guess the refuge is several miles long and two or three wide - it is a real treasure - with nesting bald eagles (they swoop our lake for fish) and big old black bears (I've seen two over the years up there) and all kinds of various wildlife. Lucky for me there are a few paths that lead in to the Reserve and one even has a covered platform for watching birds (or painting) - this one was done looking North from that platform on an afternoon last week. The time went by without notice, though at one point a beaver swam by and circled once, then disappeared. I had to hustle my clean up routine and pack up and hike back to the car when I finished, late in the day. Don't particularly wish to see any bears close up at feeding time!

Lake Morning

2011-09-29T22:40:00.000-04:00

Lake Morning

oil on panel 9" x 12"

A brisk morning out on the dock, looking down the lake shore. Times like this make me realize that every painting I make is in some way, a celebration of the marvelous experience of being alive at that moment. I am seldom happier than when up on a lake in the far eaches of Maine.

2011-09-07T20:35:00.000-04:00

Small Town Summer

oil on canvas 28" x 50"
This one has just seems to capture the absolute quiet of a lazy summer afternoon in a small rural town. Maybe a lawnmower in the distance, maybe some kids playing in an empty lot - otherwise quiet and close and hot. This one is a little more controlled than some others I've done but I like to just let the way a place affects me have the last say on what happens in the work - that and some sort of intuitive feel for what looks right and visually effective - its like the Richard Diebenkorn quote to the effect -'painting is an art where one recognizes what one has never seen".

2011-09-06T10:44:00.000-04:00

August Evening

oil on canvas 50" x 58"

The connection between poetry and painting are as close as any two different art forms can be. The search for exactly the right word or set of words echos the search for the right color, the right value. Both forms struggle against the limitations inherent to their scope and tools and process. It is those same limitations that shape the end and give life to what artifact is left at the finish. The goal of each is to allow the ones who discover that work after the fact, to engage - to enter in and experience the place and the mood found within, on their own, with only their eyes and heart to guide. I feel I’m standing on the edge of those fields Sherwood Anderson writes of every time I read this little poem.

Evening Song
Sherwood Anderson

My song will rest while I rest. I struggle along. I'll get back to the corn and
   the open fields. Don't fret, love, I'll come out all right.

Back of Chicago the open fields. Were you ever there—trains coming toward
   you out of the West—streaks of light on the long gray plains? Many a
   song—aching to sing.

I've got a gray and ragged brother in my breast—that's a fact. Back of
   Chicago the open fields—long trains go west too—in the silence. Don't
   fret, love. I'll come out all right.

"River Day"

2011-09-05T13:32:00.001-04:00

River Day

oil on canvas 48" x 60"

“A painter shows you what he painted, but an artist shows you why he painted."

It might be dangerous to post a painting with this quote attached to it because one can never be absolutely sure sure of having shown the 'why'. I don’t have a strategy about demonstrating emotion or spiritual power when I paint - that would be a disaster drowned in sentimental nonsense. I don’t want an illustration or a narrative to make it easier for me or the viewer. At the same time, I can’t think about avoiding these things as I work.
All I can do is become absorbed completely in attempting to come to grips with what is before me while allowing the poetry evident in the natural world to appear, as if by magic.
If I give myself totally to an engagement with the process of reacting to shape, space, color, form, shadow and light, I will have done all that can be done.
I’ll have to leave the judgment of whether it mostly ‘what’ or mostly ‘why’ in the result, to some one new to the work, who looks at the work.

The French poet, Paul Valery, gives me an out for even trying to explain the impossible.

“We must always apologize for talking about painting.”

Two Paintings For The G.W. Exhibit

2011-08-26T07:14:00.000-04:00

Autumn Fields, Loudoun County

oil on canvas 52" x 60"

Fogbound

oil on canvas 52" x 52"

These are two of three paintings that I'll have at the Alumni Exhibit for the George Washington University - being held at their Northern Virginia Campus. If this painting is anything at all, it is the tangible record of simply letting myself enter in to a celebration of being alive in one place at a given moment - a kind of transcendance out of oneself, into the place. Abstract or representational, the best painting allows for this - it is what de Kooning was talking about when he said, "The best we can hope for is to bring some order into ourselves". Perhaps on my best days this is accomplished.

2011-08-18T09:51:00.000-04:00

River Shoreline

oil on panel 5” x 9”

“Art is what everything else isn't”. Theodore Roethke

If one attempts to make a painting without care for the edges of things, without the linear definition of where one thing stops and another starts, one is flirting with disaster. But it is the kind of disaster that appeals to me. It is a disaster born out of losing the explanation of what ‘things’ are, what people expect to make looking at the painting easy. It is a disaster made of uneasiness, unexpectedness, uncertainty - a willingness to make a mess and intuitively react. It is a disaster built on a foundation of trusting the arrival of a viewer who would rather explore on their own in order to discover, rather than have everything prepared and explained for them. In this case both painter and viewer become unseen and unknown partners in an immersion in the true nature of the world, where all matter and energy are in constant flax and we can only struggle for understanding in small increments.

What a wondrous disaster to let go of the preconceived and embrace the unknown!

At the same time, this exuberant detonation of ‘thing-ness’ must be tempered by a disciplined practice of absolutely honest seeing - which can only be found in abandonment to the structure and essence of the visual world filtered through the sensibilities and spirit of the artist. It is only on this razor-blade edge between the chaos of unknowing and disciplined searching that art can begin to emerge.

This brings to mind this quote,

“The difference between painters and artists is that artists make decisions that get them closer to an emotional response to the subject.” T. Allen Lawson

2011-08-04T08:34:00.000-04:00

Shade

oil on panel 8" x 11"

Donald Hall, in his marvelous book,"Life Work", asks 80 year old Henry Moore what Moore thought the secret of life is. Moore, at the height of his fame as perhaps the greatest sculptor of the 20th century, had remained a humble man who avoided any interruption to his work that he possibly could.

At this point I'll quote directly from the book.

'With anyone else the answer would have begun with an ironic laugh, but Henry Moore answered me straight: "the secret to life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for your whole life. And the most important thing is - it must be something you cannot possibly do!".

Wow - something you cannot possibly do as the center of one's waking moments, the focus of all one attempts. Pretty daunting at its face value but what Henry Moore was getting at is really something joyful and enchanting - the idea that happiness or satisfaction for a lifetime is found in the work of making art - of complete engagement in coming to terms with the swirling visual world as one discovers it each day. The impossible task of compressing time and space and light into tangible evidence that might mark the way for someone else to experience that journey - and thereby to make their own discoveries. So here's a moment on a blistering day that I found under a huge old oak tree that sits just outside my studio. Perhaps just a marker along my time spent in a small way along the path Henry describing.

2011-07-24T20:01:00.000-04:00

Frontal Rocks

oil on panel 6" x 8"

Tens of thousands of years of geological time staring me face to face. Sort of puts one's cares in perspective. The earth endures and is indifferent to us and our tiny slice of time. Maybe that is one of the reasons I'm captured so, to try and come to grips with its majesty and complexity and massiveness and leave a humble visual record as an offering.

Morning Rocks

2011-07-23T10:47:00.003-04:00

Morning Rocks

oil on canvas 28" x 38"

It seems to me that, in order to make paintings that might be considered visually powerful or at least effective, a painter must be a functioning split personality. The French poet, Paul Valery, knew Degas late in the master’s life and paraphrased a key piece of knowledge passed along from the old man.“True seeing is the forgetting the names of the objects seen.”

Every painter must discover this to be true at some point or the work can never progress beyond imitation or illustration - and into the realm of art - making.

Lately I have been reading two books that relate first hand stories about Cezanne and his working methods. In a synopsis of many conversations related by Joachim Gasquet, a friend of Cezanne’s since childhood and a writer and poet, Cezanne speaks of his approach to the complexity of the visual world. While Degas and Cezanne are so different in personality, life style, and artistic approach - they both have come to similar conclusions.

“Nature is always the same, yet nothing we see endures. Our art must convey a glimmer of her endurance with the elements, the appearance of all her changes. I pick her tonalities, her colors, her nuances,... they become objects, rocks, trees, without my thinking about them,... if I get carried away with theory, if I intervene, then bang! All is lost; everything goes to hell”

This is a wonderful explanation of the act of painting, but Cezanne was such a complex man, sometimes seeming to be contradictory about every aspect of his art, it can be confusing to read him. He admonished young artists to think and consider cylinders and spheres and cubes within the subject - this was often misinterpreted - but if you read carefully a division of when to ‘intervene’ with thinking and when not to becomes clear. Preliminary to the act of painting one must stop and think; “Why have I chosen this subject? What have I fallen in love with? Where is the poetry found in this ‘motif’?” Then the artist forgets what the thing-ness of his subject and proceeds. A split personality in action, eh?

Yet thinking is essential to color and influence the subsequent immersion in the act of painting. The thing that writers who knew him seem to agree on was this; Cezanne was driven every day to paint and struggle with the difficulties of being this simultaneous dichotomy - one who thinks and feels and fights to record the impossible beauty of his world, The idea that there were no contours explaining 'things' - only elements that danced, ever always changing before him - this was his obsession. Presented here, 'Morning Rocks', is my latest attempt to follow, in my own way, the same path. Enjoy!

Talisman

2011-07-17T08:06:00.002-04:00

Talisman

oil on gessoed watercolor paper 12" x 16"

krackle 1

oil on canvas 12" x 14"

I have a wonderful book on Degas that has really good reproductions of his work, including many drawings and studies one seldom sees in museum displays. The best part of this book, however captivating the work is, are the many letters of his and published remembrances of him by others that knew him at all periods of his life but especially in his advanced years. One of those remembrances concerns a time when Degas and a friend "slipped in to a private exhibit that his idol, Ingres, was holding in his studio for potential buyers and others of note in Parisian society. I think probably Degas use of 'slipped in' meant he and his companion crashed the party - but he worshipped Ingres and his work so I'm sure Degas felt it was justified.

Degas describes the people at the party as remarking on each work Ingres had hung for exhibit - enthusing over how 'the master' had evoked past styles and examples. Degas describes Ingres as quietly and with some discomfort accepting the accolades as if he was tolerating a misreading for the sake of not upsetting his public. Finally someone exclaimed once again that a particular work had explored another style - Ingres simply stated, 'I have many brushes'. Degas was said to have laughed and repeated this statement many times, thoroughly enjoying the clever remark.

What was Degas enjoying - what was Ingres getting at in his cryptic remark? I think it was a simple statement about not considering styles or end results (the things these collectors and society types were all about) - instead Ingres simply wished to follow his brushes into the exploration of the 'motif'. Tempered by the discipline of craft and technique acquired in a lifetime of immersion in line, form, shadow, and light - as well as a dedication to learning all he could from the masters who had gone before -what Ingres (and Degas after him) was after in any given work was the record of the complex process of reacting to the chosen subject. After all, it was Degas who replied to an elderly matron who asked him if he had lost his mind - "what good is my mind? I have my model, my pencils, my paper, my paints - what do I need with my mind?".

So here I'm offering two different works - a cliff of rocks from a few years back and a more recent abstraction. They are as different as two works by the same hand might be and yet, are inextricably related by mark, color, space, surface - in fact by spirit. The rock formations and deep forests that have been my most recent obsession can be seen in these two works that have gone before - some observers have the idea that if a painter works in different styles or types, they must be a dilettante - master of none. All I can reply to such nonsense is, 'I have many brushes' - so I am not caught-up in those concerns.

Rocks (for C.T.)

2011-07-09T07:41:00.001-04:00

Rocks (for C.T.)

oil on panel 12" x 18"

The news of Cy Twombly's passing brought my thinking about my work into sharper focus I had been dissatisfied lately - too controlled, too tight, too much dictated by subject - what one artist called the tyranny of the 'things'. Twombly's life's work of proving gain and again that marks are just marks - paintings are first and foremost just flat surfaces with scrawls and grease and pigment on them - and yet what a visceral effect the scrawls always had on me (the viewer). I think this effect had to do with the envy/discovery of such freedom of exploration.

This morning's paper had a column about surfer/adventurer Laird Hamilton. Hamilton is a man who has spent a lifetime finding the bigger, further, faster - riding the heaviest waves and courting fear as one would a pretty girl. The writer, Sally Jenkins, writes of Hamilton's 'ability to resolve it (terror) into grace', his 'agility and strength, courage yet surrender' and most importantly perhaps, 'recognition and release'. Hamilton describes how he functions as 'Its not so much the vastness of the wave, it is more about the insignificance of us. When you become insignificant is when you truly begin to participate. That's when it becomes a harmonious act'.

The description of what Laird Hamilton does in a physical, athletic world crystallized for me what I recognize in Cy Twombly's work - a surrender of any notion of control or dominance in order to become 'a harmonious act'; allowing the real experience of living, seeing, marking our place in this world to take over from any notion that we might control or know. The best art, it seems to me, filters life experience through one's soul and is left behind like crumbs left by children in the dark forest.

So, I will cut loose and embrace the chaos of visual life, like riding an immeasurable, vast rogue wave. This painting, then, is offered to you as one of my markers, a pathway to my record of time and marks and shapes and space.

2011-06-27T07:11:00.000-04:00

Rocks Above #2

oil on panel 6" x 8"

Sometimes, it seems keeping up with this blog and getting my work out in front of the public takes more time and energy than the painting. This is why, for the hand full of folks who actually look at this blog, the posting must seem irregular at best. Well, that's just the organic way it seems to play out and so be it. There are days the work doesn't progress as I'd like and others that I carry the ideas around with me to sort through and figure out. Perhaps the patience required in following this stuff distills the readership to a selection of only the finest and truest of viewers - those folks who, if we met in real life, would be instantly in tune and good friends. Anyway, I will delude myself and believe this is true.

This little rock painting is a step in a direction that I'm hoping will lead me into a series of works, pushing closer to what I want - an intuitive melding of space, place, and light based on observation, coupled with abstracted color, brush handling, and a push/pull surface vitality. The subject for my jumping off point will be these images of rock cliffs and formations I've found in western Maryland. Maybe more tomorrow on process and progress. Hey, you six or seven viewers - leave a comment and let me know how you think about the work. After all, you are an exclusive club member!

2011-06-22T22:00:00.000-04:00

Pasture Trees, June 2011

oil on panel 9" x 12"

I don't like to examine too closely how I choose what subjects I paint. Like a hitter on a streak, I'm superstitious enough to believe talking about the streak can break the streak - and you've got to respect the streak ( see: 'Bull Durham"). The key seems to be, no matter the subject, before beginning one must stop and reflect on what has made one fall in love with this moment, this place. And the answers have to be about shadow and light, color and tone, space and form. Only then can one explore freely, knowing what targets the painting is seeking. Monet wrote once that he was not interested in the subject, only in what happens between the subject and him as he made the painting.

That is the explanation to how I choose what subjects I paint.

2011-06-18T00:01:00.000-04:00

Pasture, Clarke County, Virginia

oil on panel 9" x 12"

The clouds skidding and colliding and reforming overhead, like a high ceiling gone berserk, and the trees swaying and rustling in the breeze, with the heavy bales as anchors to hold the whole scene from tearing up and blowing away - I had to work rapidly, dropping brushes and getting paint everywhere - that is when I realized that my frantic energy and sharp attention simply had become part of the whole, compressed time there - my movements echoed the crazy, bumper car sky as I worked at my task.

What a glorious day!

2011-06-02T07:48:00.000-04:00

Clearing Off

oil on panel 9"x12"

"A minute in the world's life passes! To paint it in its reality and forget everything for that!

To become that moment ..." Paul Cezanne

One last small painting I just realized I had left from my recent days at Manteo. Every morning down there right on into mid-day it was overcast and windy, with smoke in the air from nearby brush fires. This particular early afternoon the day flirted with clearing and I tried to grab hold of the wind and water and sky as they buffeted a small peninsula across the harbor. Isn't that just like a crazy painter, trying to grab the wind and sky - it is just that in my quirky lifetime I have found these impossibilities are the only things that can hold my interest (that and of course, baseball and those I love).

So on it goes, this attempt to become one with the light and space.

2011-05-31T13:27:00.002-04:00

Late May, Near Charles City, Virginia

oil on panel 12" x 18"

Just one of those days that demands attention, the clouds rolling by and the trees finally full and drooping with the weight of the rain and sun. I pulled off a side road and let the place do the work. This area along Route 5, east and south of Richmond has a great richness in open space and water edged or punctuated with great, large hardwoods and thick lines of southern pines. The entire time I was there no one came by. There is a quote by Andrew Wyeth that goes, " Time is holding its breath for an instant and for eternity. That's what I'm after - that is what I'm trying to paint."

I suppose there aren't too many painters more different from each other in approach and style as Wyeth and myself - yet none more attuned to the same feeling about the work. This whole time and space battle made by a painter is really the work of physicists married to the heart of a poet.

Wanchese Airstream

2011-05-26T20:53:00.001-04:00

Wanchese Airstream

9" x 12"
"The work is the man." Edward Hopper

In a pretty busy small commercial fishing harbor, across the road from the water and warehouses and piers, sat this old beauty in a field of sand and overgrown weeds. Edward Hopper said that "the work is the man"- I was never quite certain about his meaning until I had it pointed out to me by a bad morning.
We had gone to paint at the fishing harbor a week or so ago. All morning it is overcast and threatening rain but we're there to paint, so I start a painting. This morning's painting is of a couple of fishing boats along side a dock, piles of stuff on the dock, buildings going off into the middle distance - all blue and slate and subdued greens with a soft gray sky. It would not come together - just kicked my rear all morning, the magic just never came. Now, almost every painting goes through a period when it seems lost but this one remained lost. After 3 hours of gray I realized why it didn't work - I wasn't in love with it - I never had a trigger to see me through the process. Well, I was discouraged and tired and about as gray as the morning. I'm hauling my gear back to the truck and while standing in the bed of the truck I turn and across the road is this old trailer in a field of sand and overgrown weeds. I scrape off my palette and squirt out some paint and dive in. - and I am saved! In an hour and a half I slash and flail and forget my discouragement and disaster from the morning - I have a reason to make things happen. Once again I have to teach myself why I paint - the intensity of a visual incident. A reflective surface, the juxtaposition of shadow and light, a pattern of shapes and color that describe space and form - these are the elements of physics and time, of visual life itself, that can make the insane process of making paintings come alive. Thats what it takes for me - thats how the work describes and defines me.

2011-05-08T23:19:00.000-04:00

Rocks Above, Swallow Falls

oil on panel 12" x 18"

When human frailty in the form of pain or age rears its ugly head and when the energy level is less than hoped for and the focus wanders and balks - if then, one can simply pause long enough to look up, to see the complexity of the overwhelming, fantastic visual world we are standing in - troubles and time and the anchors of our thin existence dissolve like fog before the sun.

Why do I make these paintings? This is why.

2011-04-26T17:51:00.000-04:00

April Sky Study

oil on panel 6" x 8"

The thing about painting in the field, alla-prima, is the terrible battle between what is actual and what one is able to latch onto as everything changes. After all, we are trapped by gravity on a spinning ball of rock and dirt and water as it hurtles through the vast and cold space! The planet is spinning so fast we can't comprehend it and every living thing is struggling through its life cycle and straining to gain nourishment and warmth from the sun's light. It is a mess out there. The primary business of making a painting 'out there' is to try to grab a moment of the real during a process that takes an hour or two, or more - compressing that time and distill the essence of that time frame into that chosen moment. The stuff of physicists, philosophers, and poets - but in visual form having the capacity to delight and transcend. Wow! So, here is an attempt at such magic - just looking up on a glorious day and attempting the impossible.

2011-04-25T13:29:00.000-04:00

Overhang

oil on canvas 14" x 18"

Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of

haste. It's what everything else isn't. Theodore Roethke

Well, as often is the case, the poet has said it all. I haven't posted in a few days - we were up in Western Maryland last week and we went hiking around Swallows Falls. All along the hike there were these rock formations hanging above us - dramatic and fascinating. Here's the first in a series - hope they're what everything else isn't.

2011-04-15T20:06:00.001-04:00

Afternoon Fields, April

oil on panel 7" x 10"

Sometimes a day so wonderful just brings you to a sense of how lucky one is to be alive, in this time, in this place. On this glorious day, standing before my easel in the field, it was like living in the middle of Beethoven's 'Pastoral', what could be better?

2011-04-15T06:52:00.000-04:00

April Creek

oil on panel 7" x 9"

Got this one between rainy days and the sky just won't give over to a clear day. This little creek is one I have painted from several different spots over the years. We have had years when the whole thing just dries up and thin puddles of trapped water get stagnant while sand and rocks dry out in the sun. It seems that after this winter's snow and rain she's recovered (after four years) and the blue herons are back as well. Being aware of the rhythm of nature and the smallest changes are one of the benefits of being a landscape painter - everything is a possibility and so I'm always looking and imagining - makes for interesting driving on these dirt roads.

2011-04-06T21:03:00.001-04:00

April 6th, On The Way To John's

oil on panel 7" x 12 1/2"

On a chilly, breezy April day I found this spot on a back road just shy of the West Virginia line. When I was setting up my paint box in the bed of my truck the couple that farms this place drove up and stopped and asked me what I was up to. I told them it was so pretty there I was going to try and make a painting. They said OK and drove on down to the farm house. A little later a truck stopped on and the driver came over to see what I was up to and commented - he seemed to like it. By that time the breeze had changed to a steady wind and I had to hold the paint box with my left hand to keep it steady while painting with my right. Just another joyous day outside trying to come to grips with a painting.

2011-04-04T22:43:00.001-04:00

Early Spring Afternoon

oil on panel 7 1/2" x 9 3/4"

I was heading out to the studio to gather up my kit and hike down our quiet dirt road, to find a spot from which to paint. I was taken by the yellow forsythia and my old aluminum row boat with its faded blue cover. That boat I will take out on the middle Potomac river and throw down my homemade anchors near the shade of a river island and work the shadow and light into some sort of paintings. In 1875, Monet had moved his growing family out of Paris up along to a rural village along the Seine. He made a series of paintings of the construction of a bridge; piles of lumber, the superstructure going up, the view downstream from under the bridge. Seeing a picture of Monet painting on the Seine in a small boat rigged up as a studio inspired me to buy this boat. In these early paintings, he wasn't yet the colorist painting the haystacks or the cathedral facade, in these works he worked boldly with slabs and shapes of paint in descriptive color and capturing the luminescence of the river in changing light. Though I've only seen these paintings once at a retrospective at the National Gallery, they remain my favorites, except perhaps the late, huge paintings of water reflections and lily pads. So, as I set up in the side yard and built this little spring painting, I kept the memory of those paintings in mind and maybe also my image of the artist himself, working along the river, reveling in the light and the paint.

2011-04-01T15:16:00.000-04:00

Morning Sky, April First

oil on panel 8" x 10"

The day started with patches of sharp blue peeking through big, wet clouds, so I strapped up and hiked down the road to a small turn-in along a farm field. As one tries to catch a swirling, moving sky, speed and memory and flexibility are most important. You can get set up and begin as the sky you loved stretches and runs and skitters away - but you can follow along with it and use visual clues to anchor down the first impression - even as the whole thing dissolves or (in this case) fills in. as I reached some kind of conclusion the sky covered over metal gray, the wind came up from a breeze to a stiff breeze and I realized it was only about 40 degrees out there - the pack up and hike back up the hill was made in record time.

2011-03-30T20:32:00.003-04:00

March Marsh

oil on panel 9" x 13"

March Marsh, March Marsh, bet you can't say that ten times fast.

There is a wonderful book in a series, "Monet By Himself". Its a compilation of his letters and selections of his paintings and at least half of the letters deal with his difficulties with the weather and how it affects his work. This Spring's weather has brought me to understand these difficulties more deeply. The weather has been much colder than normal and it seems every day begins overcast and clears and clouds over again. Don't get me wrong, it is my joy to paint out in the field - but this spring is testing me. Then a day comes and you get a good light and no wind and things are looking terrific - and every where I go is posted 'no tresspassing' or with stone walls right up on the on the roadside so that no one could stand there and no place triggers a compelling visual moment and my doubts creep in as I push my truck around these dirt roads aimlessly. And then a discovery. A place that is a frayed edge, a place no one cares for enough to post or wall in and the light and space is magic once more, even with the steady noise of traffic nearby or the pink flags marking the land for the coming bulldozers. For a compressed moment all is visual exploration and the struggle to find and process understanding and form.
The joy is returned.

2011-03-23T21:04:00.003-04:00

Early Spring Cedar

oil on panel 7 1/2" x 11"

I have rigged up a backpack with my new small paint box and brushes and everything else I might need, so I might hike in to places where my pick-up truck won't or can't go. So this is a first - this painting was made just a short hike down our dirt road to a little section of a farm that borders a tangle of undergrowth and wild cherry, oak, and maple trees. The cedars scattered along the fence line are deep green against the red and gray and tans of the just starting to bud woods. I carried my whole kit in my pack and it worked out nicely - the little 9" x 12" Guerilla Paintbox performed well. Can't wait to hit the trails along the Blue Ridge Mountains with my new set-up.

Fence Line, March 22

2011-03-22T18:46:00.001-04:00

March Fence Line

oil on panel 7" x 10"

Just an overgrown fence line at the edge of the woods on the first day of spring. The rain was approaching and the trees in the background were beginning to show signs of budding. I'm pretty sure the vines on the fence greened up during the time it took to make the painting.

Early Spring Sunset

2011-03-15T19:56:00.000-04:00

Early Spring Sunset

oil on panel 6" x 8"

A fallow field just beginning to show some green and the rain storm starting to be pushed off by a brisk northwest wind - all these elements conspired to give me a brief chance at bringing the space and structure within my grasp. The wondrous thing about such an image is that it requires absolute speed and focus without any of the devilish analysis that can paralyze. These kinds of paintings must be a leap of faith, just trust your instincts and go for it.

Wood Pile

2011-03-09T19:20:00.001-05:00

Wood Pile

oil on panel 8" x 11"

The hard slanted light of early March falling across the sections of a downed tree - a jumbled line of shadow and light that seems to catch the essence of this day. Spring is coming despite a call for snow this coming Monday - we're hoping for the crocus to show any time now.

2011-03-08T15:39:00.000-05:00

Early March Oak

oil on panel 6" x 8"

One of the ten 150 year old oaks that surround our place - all of them are a source of visual incident on any given day, in any possible light. As distinctive and majestic as they are, when I look at the drawings and paintings I've based on them, the work seems to reflect my mood and situation more than the 'thingness' of the subject. This is how it ought to work.

2011-03-02T21:28:00.001-05:00

Far End of the Lake

oil on panel 7" x 15"

This one was done yesterday from a charcoal sketch done up on Lake Pocomoonshine in Princeton, Maine. While sticking to the veracity of the sketch, it doesn't fill in every detail - and that is a good thing. Interesting to note here that Degas believed one should work from memory (after careful study of subject) - he thought that when working from a well prepared memory of a subject - all the peripheral material was discarded and only the essence of the subject remained.
I find it is certainly easier said than done - but still doable.

2011-03-01T22:03:00.000-05:00

Last Light, February 27th

oil on panel 6" x 8"

A painter I've admired for years once told me something that has stayed with me for sixteen or seventeen years. I happened to meet Eugene Leake one Saturday morning at the Grimaldis Gallery in Baltimore. I had come up to see his paintings in a one man exhibit at the gallery when he came in - I introduced myself and he talked to me about his work - he said he had come that morning to look at the paintings, after all the pressure and hoopla about getting everything ready and hung and theopening and such - he had come that quiet morning to see his work and rediscover who he was, so he could get back to work.

This past Sunday dawned clear and promised to warm up into the mid forties - the first good painting day in months. I paced and worried and wondered where and what I could go and paint - I was at a loss and I knew I didn't want to waste the day. I needed some way to get going, get back to work. It finally dawned on me - what I often did when I was stuck and uncertain (every year at this time) I went out front of the studio and house and looked up into the 200 year old oaks that surround our place. There it all was - form, space, color, shadow and light - the things painting has to be about before it is about any subject. as I became lost in the moment and place and the struggle to get a handle on those vital elements I realized all that I was doing was rediscovering who I was - what I loved - so I can get back to work.

2011-02-22T16:23:00.000-05:00

Top of The Cliff

oil on panel 8" x 10"

If one is trapped long enough indoors with only indoors things to paint, sooner or later one will resort to imagery drawn from sketches, old paintings of lesser success, or even successful ones of a different size. Thus a rocky promentory somewhere in Vermont, with high summer foliage and sunny summer skies, comes to life in the wintry studio (we had some more snow last night).

One clings to sanity any way possible.

2011-02-21T19:22:00.000-05:00

Bag 2

oil on panel 10" x 14"

Well the death rattle has passed off me and I am able to stand upright for more than a half hour without exhaustion. So over to the studio and back to my Giant Food giant leaf bag. I layed it down and went into battle - keep it simple; allow seeing to take over; find value structure and form - who would think one could spend a joyous afternoon with a paper bag?

2011-02-20T08:57:00.000-05:00

Pasture Creek

oil on canvas 28" x 40"

This one just went up in the George Washington University Alumni Exhibit at the Virginia Campus. A little taste of high summer in the midst of the melting ice and mud of late February. I have slowed to a standstill this week, afflicted with a monster cold and feeling punky. It is seeming to lift now and the weather man is dangling better weather in front of me like a leather chew before Angel, the wonder dog. (She's a wonder because we puzzle over what she thinks and does) Back to the hot tea and tissues and hopefully, fresh work for next week.

2011-02-09T17:18:00.000-05:00

Brown Paper Leaf Bag

oil on panel 11" x 14"

There are former students who, during their time in my class, have been traumatized by this sort of bag. As I ignored cries for mercy begging to have bags set before them no more, I assured them that 'a lifetime's joyful work' might be found in bags such as this. The form, the varied surfaces, the opportunity for color exploration within the neutral brown, ... one could go on. They didn't believe me so, thus is launched a series of bag works. I'll show them! Tomorrow, multiple bags.

2011-02-08T18:51:00.000-05:00

Winter Geranium

oil on panel 8" x 10"

I'm not certain why I placed this pot of Geraniums on the striped cloth but it must have something to do with a desire to set chaos up for myself and fight my way through to some semblance of understanding.

Otherwise it would be cry for help by someone unbalanced.

2011-02-03T16:28:00.000-05:00

Dark Vase

oil on panel 6" x 9.5"

Ok - here's the second one of the crazy vase - different color / tonal feel to it but still the same source for potential instability in the painter. How can you trust someone so unbalanced?

Thats it for this week - enjoy the Super Bowl commercials and see you here on Monday.

2011-02-02T23:02:00.000-05:00

Light Vase

oil on panel 6" x 8"

In a fit of miscalculation, I chose to paint a pressed glass vase - after all, I love painting the battle between reflective surfaces and transparency. This particular subject has, as I discovered, a most complex pattern of facets and swirls. All these tiny shapes and swirls inter-connect and form repeating patterns and they each pick up reflective color from the light boucing off nearby surfaces. It is a certain path to insanity to attempt to come to grips with all this while manipulating brushes and paint and even hope to get an image. What I have given you is a record of this slippery path to the rubber room. Then I decided to try it again. Something to look forward to tomorrow!

2011-01-31T21:08:00.000-05:00

The Leaktight No. 8

oil on panel 6" x 8"

This little tarnished metal bucket was rediscovered in the great studio clean out in the winter of 2010 / 2011. The thing that made me keep it was the stamped name in the bottom - 'Leaktight No.8'.

It was just a paint bucket but a paint bucket with swagger - so I painted it to immortalize the little bucket. Plus I'm a sucker for shiny metal. As I was working in my state of concentration I realized the orange reflection is me in my orange anorack standing before the subject. The magic leaktight! Enjoy.

2011-01-28T17:00:00.001-05:00

Old Fan

oil on panel 6" x 8"

This fan is an old table top model, probably from the 40s - it still works - and it weighs a ton. I don't know why I did this from the back angle - probably because of the small mass of forms. I don't like to examine the 'why' too much - its hard enough wrestling with the how and the why has to remain mysterious enough to power me through the difficulty.

I guess that makes sense only to those who do this crazy thing called painting.

2011-01-27T07:45:00.000-05:00

Ball Jar 1

oil on panel 6" x 8"

We've got six inches of new snow and all the local schools are shut down and for the first time in thirty-two years all that means to me is it is a little tougher to walk over to the studio! A little celebration is in store with this little jar - I pushed to stay free and loose in technique while disciplined in ignoring the thing and seeing its essence. Easy to say, tough to do.

PS it is great snow man snow - real sticky.

This painting may be purchased unframed for $125.

Please contact the artist for information. Thanks.

2011-01-26T08:27:00.001-05:00

Leap of Faith

oil on panel 6" x 8"

I tried to be a little looser, a little free with larger brushes - on a panel this small using larger brushes is a relative thing. I do love painting glass, I guess because it is the best example of what the process of painting requires - an absolute leap of faith - you have to suspend your preconceived knowledge of thing-nesss and allow yourself to experience the incredible complexity to be discovered in every day objects - trusting that the exploration of carefully seeing will bring your work closer to what is real. It is part physics; part chemistry; part spirit.

This painting may be purchased unframed for $125.
Please contact the artist for information.

Red Onion

2011-01-25T07:49:00.001-05:00

Red Onion

oil on panel 6" x 8"

Still keeping to single subject, kinds re-learning my chops and shaking off the rust. Some reporter asked Rogers Hornsby once what he did during the winter. He answered, "I'll tell you what I do, I sit by the window and wait for spring." I'm right there with him - but I'll take a day in the high 40s so I can get out and take a shot at making a painting.

This painting may be purchased unframed for $125.
Please contact the artist if interested.

2011-01-24T09:10:00.001-05:00

Copper Pot

oil on panel 6" x 8"

Here's the first in what will officially be my painting a day exercise - the shoulder's feeling fine post surgery (the fine motor skill is a little shaky yet) - and I've finally got the studio squared away after sifting through & storing 32 years of teaching stuff - so it begins. I'll tell you that spending a couple of hours simply struggling to grab hold of space, light, and form is wonderfully rejeuvenating and maddening. Every time a relearning and toal absorbedness in the process is the challenge and the reward. Future postings will be plein air as weather permits but for now small objects found.

This painting can be purchased unframed for $125
please contact for further information.

2011-01-19T21:27:00.002-05:00

Evening, Summer Solstice

oil on canvas 28" x 44"

This is one of three works I'll have in an exhibit at the George Washington University Loudoun Campus February 7 - March 25, 2011
at the GWU Science and Technology Campus in Ashburn, Virginia.

There will be an opening reception on Thursday, February 17,

6:00 to 8:30 pm.
I

2010-11-11T06:46:00.003-05:00

Summer Fields

30" x 38"

oil on canvas

The thing about central Loudoun County, Virginia, is that you can still find places that seem to be in the middle of nowhere - empty and rural and quiet - and yet just a mile or two away are towns and houses and traffic and population. My task is to search out these places that seem to be beyond the times and temporal business of today. This painting was made at one of those places, somewhere near Hamilton and not far off from Leesburg, yet on a dirt road and away from everything.

2010-11-04T15:54:00.000-04:00

Barn at Fields' Farm

oil on panel

10" x 15"

Another view of the same barn. I loved being able to roam around that old farm. It had been sold to the county for a new school but then the construction was held up for five years. I was always completely alone and able to choose my subjects and work in complete serenity. Unfortunately, the county managed to push through the school's construction and now the old farm is completely gone. The wise person said "nothing is gained without giving up something else."

2010-11-04T15:43:00.003-04:00

November Woods

44" x 50"

This big painting started out on site, bungee corded to an old, large aluminum easel with my french easel used for a balast / anchor against any breeze that might come up. After struggling with it for a couple of visits to the small creek not too far from home, the finishing work was done in my studio. Degas wrote that first year art students should draw for a year from plaster casts with the second year students moving up to actual still life subjects. Third year students would draw for another year, this time from the human figure. The study and application from the first three years should be such that the fourth year students would work only from memory of what had been seen. I had to go back to look again and again on this one. Maybe modern man's memory just isn't as supple.

2010-09-07T19:54:00.001-04:00

Empty Barn

oil on panel 6" x 8"

As far as I can tell, this barn sat right about where the middle of a new high school just north of Purcellville, Virginia now sits. It was a great place to work - I could drive my truck back in among the sheds and barns and fields. No one around and interesting subjects to work from. In this one I've just tried to keep it simple and minimize brushwork, trying to catch the light pouring in around the edges.

2010-09-05T06:49:00.005-04:00

On The Way To Middleburg

oil on canvas

28" x 50"

Early fall, brisk weather, and a runaway sky full of nimbus clouds racing overhead like a stampede. working in a brush - dropping frenzy, trying to grab hold of being alive in that moment.

About as good as life gets!

yikes!

2010-07-07T17:54:00.000-04:00

Blue Baking Dish, Apples, and Knife

6" x 9

oil on panel

I'm including this painting now because of the knife. a week ago this morning I had rotator cuff surgery on my good (right) shoulder. Thus the knife. This morning at the doctor's they told me I won't be back 100% for 12 months. I'm not sure when I'll be able to paint anything, which is distressing (to say the least) but I'm thinking about maybe getting pastels out and working small things with my arm still in the sling for now. We'll see. (I've considered non dominant hand (left) knife paintings. Seems to be too desperate.

One thing's for certain, it won't heal any faster if I sit around and mope - so watch this space for new works. Without the set-back I'd be burying this place with good stuff by now.

better than ever awards

2010-06-10T13:29:00.002-04:00

Hammers and Coffee Mug
oil on panel 8" x 6"

Well, so long to the class of 2010 and before they get too far down the road I'm announcing the Art Awards for this year. Just imagine an award named after each of you, given in honor of you each being the best you we have ever seen. No one has ever been a better Sophie or Hannah or Agnes or Amelia or Jacob or Yaqub or Crysta or Meg or Alexis or anyone else in our group. Because when it comes down to it, the only award that can really matter is the one you give yourself secretly when the process of making art takes you away from the everyday and your heart, eye, and hand come into alignment for a golden moment.
So guys, get out there and learn something and keep up the life-long search for that award
that really means something.

Glorious day

2010-04-21T12:20:00.000-04:00

Glorious Day

oil on canvas

36" x 40"

The title says it all - sometimes in a great while, if you work at it regularly, you will be standing before the easel out in a field or right there at home and you are present as the magic happens.

This was one of those days

2010-04-06T13:00:00.002-04:00

Study of a Young Woman

oil on panel

10" x 8"

I've recently embarked on a series of studies of students - working rapidly and wet-in-wet to avoid too much busy work on detail while holding to the visual reality as much as I can. If I've learned anything of value in 32 years of teaching, it is simply that making art requires an abandonment of what one thinks one knows, as well as ignoring the idea of (or concern with) a finished product. Each work requires a leap of faith that process will lead to results - and that process must be a commitment to visual exploration as if everything encountered is absolutely new to the artist. This requires a focus that borders transcendance (forgetting time and place) and requires total absorbedness with a shadow / light / space / shape / form sort of awareness. Sounds a little flakey but that is actually how / what artmaking seems to be. It just so happens that this kind of work encompasses the human mind and spirit functioning at the highest level - no matter what the pursuit. Bill Walsh, late coach of the San Francisco 49ers and respected football innovator, titled his book "The Score Takes Care of Itself". Pretty much sums it all up - involve yourself in the process fully with command of the fundamentals and the results will be there waiting for you - as if by magic.

2010-04-06T12:57:00.000-04:00

"A Glance"

oil on panel

8" x 10"

"Oil Study / Young Woman"

9" x 11"

2010-03-07T09:49:00.001-05:00

Folding Chairs

16" x 22"

oil on canvas

This one was done in a one shot demo for a class of high school students a few years back - I just came upon it in the studio a couple of weeks ago and today it just seemed a good break from the winter posts of late. I've been thinking a lot about the processes involved with making paintings and choosing subjects and my teaching - I'm retiring very soon (after 32) years to paint full time and a lot of stuff is churning up in my head. I keep coming back to something I find I'm often saying to my A.P. Studio students when they question me about color schemes or composition or any other of a dozen things in their work - I turn their questions back on them by asking -"what are you in love with here? What is the star of the show? What simple wonder are you bringing back to show us?" Just as this painting is not about folding chairs but instead is about the light and shadow as it carves repeated similarities in shape and space and directional angles and creates a battle between foreground and background / negative and positive space - we can discover what all painting is really about - the experience of a visual exploration and the record it leaves for others to explore. I think more than subject, style, or effect - painting has to have its origin in what Avigdor Arhika called "the integrity of every mark" - what each work must be"about". That humble task of exploration without concern for product - discovering what I love about being alive and attempting to paint that joy- will be my concern as I move from daily teacher to a daily painter.

2010-02-19T12:18:00.000-05:00

Two December Trees

oil on canvas

20" x 24"

These two giants stand guard over our home and I wish I had a nickel for each time I've just gazed up at their massive structure in awe - at any time of year. In winter though, the bare bones are revealed and the gestural quality as they sway and reach far above me is amazing.

2010-02-04T18:04:00.000-05:00

December Stream

oil on panel

6" x 8"

The same place more or less where many of these paintings occur - beavers have created this little pool of freezing water and another beyond. The chaos along the left bank made up of fallen saplings and mud and ice and snow and the reflecting pool of ice skim and water all set off the light up on the right - hand bank. A real gamble of a painting that seems (to me) to work while staying as loose as I dare. This is how I love to work.

2010-02-04T17:59:00.000-05:00

Slow Melt

oil on panel

8" x 10"

This one was done on one of those days right after a light snow and the temps went up and slowly the ice and snow began to shrink away from the grasses - I love the blonde and orange grass and pine needles against the cold light and shadow of the snow. Captures a moment in time by compressing an hour or so.

Autumn Treetops

2010-01-05T09:30:00.000-05:00

Autumn Treetops

oil on canvas

5" x 10"

This little one came out of a blustery, cool fall day and the waving trees were still holding on to most of the foliage. Place and time and the immediacy of being and trying to grab hold of all that - that is the subject of the work always - the subject is simply the trigger.

Comments!

2009-12-31T11:42:00.000-05:00

Hello everyone - be sure to leave comments about the work - I'm hoping to establish a dialogue among painters and folks who love paintings - kind of a virtual artist's cafe. Go ahead, help start the ball rolling - and thanks for visiting.

2009-12-10T11:40:00.002-05:00

Autumn Creek

oil on panel

9" x 7"

"Its alright to let yourself go as long as you can let yourself back."

Mick Jagger

The trick, when painting outdoors, is that there are no tricks. Everything is in flux and there are no shortcuts and no formulae. Only the exploration of the truth. This is what attracts me most of the time, this absence of repetition or certainty. One must relearn the whole thing all over again as one tries to let go of preconception or knowledge. It is this plunging -in while abandoning the worry of result or product that frees the painter to the total absorption in the moment, the light, the space, the energy. It is discovering an approach to physics from the non-mathematical side of things. The reassurance comes from knowing of others who have gone before along the lines of a similar quest.

"A minute in the world's life passes!
To paint it in its reality and forget everything for that!

To become that minute." Paul Cezanne

2009-12-08T13:29:00.001-05:00

Down the Road

7" x 10"

oil on canvas

Tangled bramble roses and weeds along roadside ditches on a November day warmer than expected. There is a poetry to be found down there on the rough edge of an old farm. The visual tension between the tangle and the escaping road is enough to keep me occupied and the risk of ending up with nothing is enough of a trigger the painting. Some days I will pace and wander and drive the pick-up all over searching for just such a moment. Often it is a sideways, 'out of the corner of my eye' thing that brings me to a halt.

"Lord: it is time. The summer was immense.

Lay your shadow on the sundials

and let loose the wind in the fields."

Ranier Maria Rilke

2009-12-07T16:33:00.000-05:00

Woods in November

oil on canvas

A breezy and crisp day with the last of the leaves hanging on. Folks are always suggesting scenic places that "I would just love to paint"... or so they assume. Its probably more about what they would like to paint I guess. Willem deKooning is quoted as saying "the best we can hope for is to bring some order to ourselves." I think, in his broken english, he was talking about an understanding of ourselves as measured against life's struggles and confusions. Along that line, I'm much more drawn to something like the chaos of this little patch of woods as the sun light breaks up among fluttering leaves and bending trees and the tangle of light and shadow, leaf and branch all cry for attention. On such a day one feels time fleeing before winter's approach and how precious every moment is. These are the things I am attracted toward when attempting to make a painting, wrestling some understanding out of the visual cacophany of living things - finding a little order within myself as I struggle to understand what I see.

2009-12-02T14:06:00.002-05:00

Island in the Stream

oil on panel

6.75" x 12"

"If you trust in Nature, in the small Things that hardly anyone sees and that can so suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves,
to win the confidence of what seems poor:
then everything will become more coherent and somehow more reconciling,
not in your conscious mind perhaps,

which stays behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness."

Ranier Maria Rilke

2009-12-01T14:17:00.000-05:00

Single Tree

oil on panel

6" x 10"

Like a dancer caught in a pose, this tree stood where a fence line once ran on a deserted farm near our home. A lovely, quiet spot in the rolling hills of Virginia's piedmont.

2009-11-13T17:16:00.000-05:00

November Oak

oil on canvas

16" x 22"

When we first came to live in the old church, I was just blown away by the ancient old oaks that stood guard all around our little home. They towered over us and swayed with the wind and shaded the entire acre and a half and were almost too immense to comprehend. So I set up my french easel out under them and began painting, looking up at the cold late autumn sky through the muscular branches. I never tire of them and when I'm feeling blocked or unsatisfied with my work I find I can go back to this source and rediscover what my painting needs to be about - light and space and place and form. This one dates from our first year or two there, maybe 1986.

2009-11-12T10:11:00.000-05:00

Under Route 719

oil on canvas

14" x 18"

Right on the north end of town there is a wooded creek that snakes along between the old part of town and the newer business strip of autobody shops and bus terminal and carpet places. It is a wild sanctuary that no one wants - a kind of flood plane that has a mix of wild meadow and woods and second growth and thick white pine stands that were planted to sheild buildings along its edge. It is a favorite place to paint because no one bothers me and the varied subjects have been wonderful. So here I am one summer day at the least picturesque place along the stream - the pre-cast concrete spillway under a local road. Once upon a time this would have been a sturdy stone structure echoing the craftsmen who built it - now it is what it is. Yet I found the play of dappled light and shadow, the dark little stream and the steamy summer light cooling in the shade all transfixing. I always find the discarded edges around our modern life spaces hold the most interest.

2009-11-06T11:32:00.001-05:00

Creek Bank

oil on panel

Down in a nearby creek and examining the overhanging bank - marveling at the glow created by the light reflecting off the water as the water undercuts the trees and tangle of growth above. I suppose from such things the Grand Canyon was created.

2009-11-05T14:49:00.002-05:00

Late Afternoon

oil on canvas

14" x 18"

There are usually black cattle dotting this hillside. One hot day I had parked the truck up against the fence line and had worked most of an afternoon looking the other way toward some old dilapidated barns. I'll set up in the bed of my pickup so I can see over the fence line and the tangle of briars and weeds. As I was closing up for the day I happen to glance up the opposite hill, I was caught by the quickly receding light as it broke through the lower parts of the big trees along the field's edge. I scrambled the french easle and all my stuff around 180 degrees and put a small canvas up and worked like crazy to get the essence of that sideways glance. That seems to be a reoccuring theme with me - trying to catch the moment that one is captivated by out of the corner of one's eye. It is more than a little nuts to try and make a permanent, tangible visual statement based on something fleeting and uncertain. Its also the great fun of the whole enterprise.

2009-11-03T09:00:00.002-05:00

Creek Mudbank

oil on canvas

12" x 18"

A small stream nearby that can get pretty low in the height of summer. I set up in the gravel in the middle of the stream and looked back toward the mudbank, where the roots of a tulip poplar were exposed and the woods crowded the edge of the stream with a wild tangle of undergrowth and mature trees.

I have a wonderful little book on black and white photography titled something like 'Beauty and Art'. The writer is dead-on when he says that an artist's primary task is to bring 'form out of chaos'. By form he means understanding or a moment of clarity, or even a moment of quiet significance in the most ordinary setting. Just the sort of challenge that will get my attention every time.

2009-11-02T15:27:00.001-05:00

Islands In The River

Oil on Canvas

7" x 10"

I spent some days making monochromatic studies. I was intrigued by the idea of conveying the space, the place, the moment in time strictly in terms of value. Sort of limiting my method to increase the expressive potential. I'd recommend it to any painter as a way to get down to the barest necessities and eliminate a lot of extemporaneous and unneeded. But color is always there, waiting for you. Inescapable.

Degas always said he believed in working from memory - forcing the artist to focus only on the things remembered as the essence of the real. Of course, he also made those georgious wax figures and horses to assist his memory - along with the life-like drawings. Seems he was playing both sides of the street, so to speak. I love being out in the world working too much to go the memory route - so I'm always testing ways to eliminate as much as possible while still grabbing hold of the moment.

2009-11-01T09:41:00.001-05:00

October Oak

oil on panel

6" x 8"

Our home is an old church built in the late 1860s and my studio is an old one room school house also on the property. The church was in use well into the 1930s. A local farmer's funeral was the last service observed there. It was winter and the horse drawn hearse foundered on the muddy, snowy road and the men had to lay down logs to corduroy the worst part.of the road. The school house was built for black children who weren't allowed to go to the white schools, and was the last one room school in use here in Loudoun County, just shy of the mid twentieth century. One breezy fall day day a couple of years back, a sedan stopped in the dirt road that fronts our place and an elderly black lady got out of the car and stared at the studio.
We invited her to come up the little hill and go inside the old building but she said she couldn't make it over. She just wanted to look at it one more time. It turns out the lady was the last teacher at the school.
I've heard stories that she walked four miles from Purcellville every day to teach those children.
The school/studio and our home are surrounded by eight 200 year old oak trees, huge and majestic. They have been silent witness to all the struggle and joy that have played out in this place. Sometimes when I'm stumped about what to paint and the sun and wind through those giants reminds me, I go out under the oaks and look up and listen for the ghosts as I work to capture a moment.
If I'm fortunate the painting carries the essence of the place.

2009-10-30T11:07:00.001-04:00

Junkyard Late Afternoon

oil on canvas

12" x 16"

I've never been interested in a pituresque scene. Never been much interested in a nice view. I am always drawn to the juxtaposition of opposites and the visual dynamics encoded in shadow and light, as well as relative color intensity. Once a place and subject present themselves I simply need to become lost in the process and let the subject take care of itself. I used to do a lot of paintings in old junkyards because no one would bother about what I was up to and it was a wonderful source of the machine made subjects being slowly taken back by nature.There aren't many such places left as the suburbs gentrify the countryside. The old cars have been compressed and trucked away for salvage.

2009-10-30T11:05:00.000-04:00

Summer Day Near Town

oil on panel

8" x 11"

I was standing knee-deep in grasses and saplings, trying to get the sharp sky cutting through second growth trees as the breeze made them wave and flutter. There is something that attracts me to the chaos of nature at the edge of towns or farms or other places people have carved out. I guess it is all about the juxtaposition of order hard won and free-form tangles and energy. This one allows the free and energetic to dominate.

2009-10-21T11:52:00.000-04:00

Pears with Silver Dish

oil on panel

The eternal battle to grab shadow, light, color and space. Perhaps a draw.

2009-10-21T11:04:00.000-04:00

Pines Overhead

oil on canvas

9" x 12"

On a day when I was despairing of finding anything to paint I found these pines near a busy road and a bike path on the edge of town - no place picturesque or special, just some trees that had survived about 20 years judging by the size. It isn't funny how something on the margins of the everyday

can encompass a precious moment in time.

2009-10-21T10:55:00.002-04:00

Late Afternoon on the Potomac

oil on canvas

9" x 12"

The river can be a tunnel for wind but also for light and shadow because of the rows of trees that line it on both banks, once I get away from any towns or bridges. This is the shady side of one of the many islands that can be found in the river above White's Ferry. The quiet and peace can be magical in the late summer, punctuated now and then by the rumble of a train passing on the Maryland side.

2009-10-21T10:49:00.000-04:00

Above The Fence Line

oil on panel

7" x 22"

A late Ausust day on the edge of an old farm already being torn down and cut up into lots. The wind and sky seemed to be full of nostalgia for what once was and full of portent of what was coming. OK, maybe I was overreacting to something inevitable.

2009-10-18T13:13:00.001-04:00

Treetops and Clouds

oil on panel

9" x 12"

A late summer morning with a hint of fall yet to arrive. The rapid execution didn't allow for any thought of subject, instead a total absorption in the light and shadow of the moment.

2009-10-17T10:12:00.000-04:00

Late Afternoon

13.5" x 9.5"

oil on panel

We were on a lake with family and the kids were still small then and just having a great time swimming and paddling around in the canoe and rowboat and picking blueberries - this was just a quiet moment after dinner and just before gliding out for some fishing just at dusk.

2009-10-17T10:02:00.001-04:00

Edge Of The Farm

8.5" x 11.5"

oil on panel

This was done during a time when a local farm had been closed down and sold for development but the project was held up in court for a couple of years - so I had an idyllic time just driving my truck in amongst the ghostly barns and sheds and setting up where I pleased and painting. This was a corner near the fence line and I was in love with a silvery old tree that swayed and creaked in the summer winds.

2009-10-14T15:42:00.000-04:00

Brisk Day On The Lake

oil on canvas

6" x 14"

Out on my row boat on a day when we'll have white caps later because the wind is coming up and the day has the feeling that is quintessential Maine for me. I guess that is what I was after more than anything elese.

2009-10-12T09:40:00.000-04:00

From Down in the Creek

oil on panel

9" x 12"

It is part of the difficulty of the whole enterprise, this painting from nature, the question of what, where, and why. Henri Cartier-Bresson said that "It is putting one's head, one's eye and one's heart on the same axis", one of the best explanations of this controlled madness that I've yet found. Which arrangement of shadow and light - which unusual point of view - which simple thing will trigger the beginnings of a painting cannot be foreseen and, for me, it is never just a pretty scene. One has to be willing to go out each day and venture into the uncertainty, searching. Like a prospector, if a good vein is found in a place, no matter how ordinary or unusual, the painter will mine there as long as he can make it pay out. I've been back to this little creek many times in all times of year, always finding some small visual incident that captures my attention.

I'm sure I will return.

2009-10-09T13:07:00.000-04:00

Blowing Up

oil on panel

8" x 12"

The weather blows right up the lake from the east
and the clouds are racing and scudding and piling up over head.

2009-10-08T18:06:00.000-04:00

Summer Trees

oil on panel

6.5" x14"

Along an old fence line on an abandoned farm, everything about high summer seems to be here.

2009-10-08T14:58:00.000-04:00

Barns and Sheds on Field's Farm

oil on panel

8.5" x 11.5"

I was caught by the dramatic left to right slant of the land and the big oak to the left as the buildings appeared to stretch out with the topography. I'm a sucker for big old trees.

2009-10-08T14:27:00.001-04:00

Summer Sunset on the Lake

oil on panel

10" x 12"

Out in my aluminum row boat, anchored against the current in Lake Pocomoonshine. My son kayaking nearby, casting for small mouth and drifting past to see my progress. Racing the dusk and its attendant mosquito swarms. Dropping brushes in the boat in the hurry to grab that spectacular moment even as it slips away - I guess that is one of my primary motivations - to try and compress time, space, and energy - a physicist with a brush.

2009-10-06T15:23:00.000-04:00

Approaching Storm

28" x 28"

oil on canvas

"Let me seize the air pulsing down these hills,

kissed by a moment's cold frolic,

thoughtless of the strangling calendar.

Let my feet swirl freely among the blonde tangle-grass,

my head planted among intemperate clouds,

at one with my precious delerium.

Nothing lives as sweet as these hours poured out upon the land,

standing at the edge of mystery while boldly greeting the day

with my imperfection, held out as an offering.

I am never far from these fields,

held as they are in my deepest times.

Their wind-sounds find me in the night,

slant light running loose

among shadows in my eyes."