Hudson River School

This is not a very good reproduction of a painting I did last fall. I didn't have time to take it to my photo guy and I needed to get it out to the gallery so I took this image on the floor of our living room. Nice glare. A little blurry, too. It was purchased by a great collector of the arts who lives in Boston. The piece is titled "View of the Hudson from Olana". It is, of course, the Hudson river from Frederick Church's home. I was literally standing right next to the house. Some of my work is influenced by the Hudson River School, no doubt. I can't say that it has been a defining factor in most of my work, though. With this painting, however, I wanted to make a piece that was clearly influenced by them and notably Church, while using his property as the subject matter. I figured what a better way to celebrate this type of American art than to paint the master's property. He and his family had quite the view. I wonder how much different it looked when they lived there. I made almost no adjustments. This is pretty much what it looks like.

LA Art Show...

Just finished a wave painting going to Arcadia for the LA Art Show. 24"x 30" on canvas. This should be the last wave painting for a while as I am doing a few smaller paintings and then starting a whole new series of works for a show in Dallas. Rachel and I are going out for the opening in LA. Should be good times......

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.