Museum Show

I have been invited to participate in a Museum show at the Long Beach Museum of Art in California. I am very excited about it. The show is called Influential Element: Exploring the impact of Water. For a state like CA, it is clearly important and water has certainly been a dominating subject for me and my paintings for a long time. They have requested two paintings. Genesis II (That is me above pretending to work on the finished painting) and Low Country. The show will run from Jan. to April of next year. We hope to go out for the opening, because it is the same night as the opening for the LA Art Show. I will be sending two large paintings of, you guessed it, water, to Arcadia gallery, who will be attending. Should be an interesting night. I went to college at Long Beach State and lived in LA for about 6 years. I have hardly been back but just a few times since. I don't really miss it. The traffic was just unbearable, but it was a really great town for a young person.

The Purple Painter

It seems most of my pieces, as I see it, venture into the realm of purple. I have no idea why. Just various shades of purple. I actually don't really care for the color. It must have something to do with the lights in my studio. Or maybe my rods and cones aren't firing like they used to. The painting above is a recent one and although not nearly as pink or purple in person, this piece is exactly where I seem to go. I wonder if other artists have tendencies that seem to have a mind of their own. I really don't notice it at first, but by the time I am done, it is real obvious. I am not saying its a bad thing. This piece turned out very well. I am just wondering when I became the purple painter.....................side note.......I saw a painting this summer of a nude by Daniel Sprick that was part of a figure show in Santa Fe. It was simply miraculous. I looked at it for a long time. I even stayed a few extra hours so I could go back and look at it. Thanks Dan for showing the rest of us what is possible. And it wasn't at all purple.......

ALONE ON A WIDE WIDE SEA

Here is a painting Arcadia Gallery sold at the USArtists show in Philadelphia. Its called Open Water, 24"x 30". My wife and I attended and it was nice to enter the show and see it hanging front and center with a beautiful red dot attached to it. Thank you Steve Diamant. I put alot of effort into it. It is one more in a series of wave paintings that have been very good to me.

I am still attracted to the ocean. I have a new series ready to be painted and I am very excited about it. We went to the New England Coast and I was very inspired by what I saw. I plan on pushing the abstract quality of the breaking waves. Up close, they become other worldly, almost like melting butter. The shapes and patterns are beautiful, surreal and terrifying all at once. More than 10 years ago, I took images of waves at night with a flash. It changed the way I looked at waves. It was phenomenal. I still have some of the images. I would really like to move some of my work away from straight realism into a realm between opposing worlds of abstraction and reality. This is not a novel approach. Dan Adel, who is also in Arcadia, has done just that. With waves no less......But I have many ideas.....Narrative rural landscapes of the south, incorporating history, both past and present. I am excited about that, too. That will be for next spring. But first I gotta..............

Look who is back

Ok, so its been a while. I have had huge computer problems. We now have two brand new Mac computers, courtesy of a few sales of paintings. I will try to catch up as best I can. Very busy summer and fall. I will post stories and paintings in the coming days. I am having all of the images I have taken in the last 10 years along with a record of my paintings copied to my new computer this weekend. I hope they make it. If they don't, I will curse these devices forever.

Tempest

Another painting for my show in Santa Fe. Titled "Tempest", oil on canvas, 24"x 51 1/2". I struggled with the notion of putting the road in on the left. Up to this point, I haven't really put any evidence of humans in my paintings, but this was a good balance to the painting and gives it scale. I did a series of storms in pastel a number of years ago and my signature became a little road on the left. I always liked it and figured it might be appropriate here. It also gives anyone fleeing the storm a way out, or anyone chasing, a way in.

Early morning

Very busy getting ready for the Santa Fe show. I have completed quite a few more paintings. Here is one titled, "Wake". Its 48"x 54", on canvas. Its hard to see in this image, but there is a boat wake in the bottom right corner. It is also a painting of the early morning, waking, hours on the sea. Along with "Mediterraneo", I now have two seascapes for the show with a meditative quality that I search for a lot in my work. A simple beauty.

Water everywhere

This is a new painting and one of the largest I have done at 64"x 72. I have just finished it today. It will be part of a solo exhibit I will have at Evoke Contemporary, in Santa Fe, in May. The gallery is one block from the Plaza. What a great place Santa Fe is. I have been there a number of times in the past 5 years and its always such a pleasure.

New old painting

I just received a painting back from a couple with a large family who would like me to try and sell it for them. They are in a financial challenge right now and I would like to help them. This painting is about 10 years old. It was one of the first small, detailed paintings I did. It's strange to see something from so long ago. It is a bit looser than the current small pieces I do, but it is still a nice painting. It is of the beach on the east coast of Florida, somewhere between New Smyrna and Cocoa. If interested, please let me know. It is oil on wood, 6 3/4 x 6 3/4. I am asking $1500 or best offer. All money will go to the family.

Rachel and I went to see James Rosenquist speak tonight. I was never quite intrigued enough with his work to give it much time, but I am aware of his legacy and impact on American art. He was a good speaker and seemed humbled by his success, giving much credit to simple luck and timing. He answered a number of questions at the end, some of which seemed a bit trivial, but what has resonated with me is his response to a question about what advice he would give to an aspiring artist. He said work hard, pay attention to history, but don't try to emulate other artists. Do something no one else has done. Mostly, he said, just work hard. That I can identify with. It is in my family to work hard. The whole Cornell history is about working hard. Its go time.
The above painting I finished a few days ago. Distant Thunder, 5 1/2"x 7". Sending it to Quidley and Company in Boston. Nice people.
I have started my largest piece to date, 63"x 72". It is a painting of waves. It will be a real task to finish it and finish it well. It going to Santa Fe for a solo show in May. A lot to do
Work hard.

Last Light

A few summers ago I took at drive up to Estes Park in Colorado after a show. It was amazing. It was just an afternoon really and I managed to see so much. I took a number of photos, maybe 100 or so. I have done probably 10 paintings from that day. This piece was at the climax of the drive. The light was fading and I was above the treeline at the summit of the drive when I pulled over and hiked up a hill. Just at the crest looking mostly east was this view. I usually change photos I take to make paintings or crop images together, but this is just as it was. The scale is deceiving because the snow was quite large and the rocks were huge. The sky was unforgettable and the wind was howling. The earth can be so beautiful. I can imagine in winter I could get nowhere near here. The snow would be 10 feet deep and the temperature would be bitterly cold.

But that day, all that was left of the winter snows was this long lip.

Earlier in the day I stopped at a lookout over a valley and the clouds broke just a sliver to allow a stream of light to crease the valley floor. Stunning.

A few others stopped also and after a while we all just looked at each other and smiled. We couldn't believe what we were seeing. Almost no words were spoken and none were necessary. But then after only a few minutes, it was gone, cloudy again and obscured.

Just like life.

New painting

Just finished another painting today. Its called "Shooting Star". It's one I had done a smaller version of earlier this year. That small painting was purchased in St Louis by a couple that had encountered a falling star or meteorite while driving. It went crashing into the woods after buzzing right by their car. It was a perfect fit for a piece. I hope this one finds a good home. 7 1/2" x 9".