Coming Home

Finished this painting last week. "Coming Home", 20"x 20", oil on canvas. There is a single car with it's headlights on coming up the road, about to cross the bridge. This title alludes to the many scenarios this painting could be. Dusk or dawn. Coming back from a long night at work. Heading home after a long day a work. Coming back from a night on the town. Coming home after a secret affair with someone else. Coming home from after being away at school. Coming back from vacation......the possibilities are endless. You can decide for yourself.

This will be part of my solo show at Arcadia gallery. Opens March 24th.

Dusk

I am beginning to figure out why I am painting what I am painting. I talk all the time about finding home.This longing where to live. I spent a great part of my childhood moving and traveling. I have seen this country backwards and forwards. Every mole hill and hamlet and every highway that leads from one place another, I have been to. As an adult I have moved and lived in numerous cities. However, I have been here in Orlando now, in the same house, for 9 years. The longest I have ever lived in one place. But I have spent alot of my time on the road looking at many, many cities and towns to move to. I have bothered countless real estate agents to show me houses. Many beautiful things. Every town my wife and I travel through we look at homes and imagine what our lives would be like living there. All of this has been the search for home. I just don't know where it is. I even have dreams where I am begging to go home, pleading with who is there to let me...........this painting, and many of the others, has to represent this search for home. I didn't really notice it at first, but now it seems so clear......... This house was right by where we stayed in NY state last summer. We drove by it every day and I just.....imagined.

Dusk
oil on canvas
21.5"x 25"

This piece will be part of my solo show at Arcadia next month.

The way home...

Here is a painting I finished a number of weeks ago that I finally was able to varnish. I didn't want to set up all the things I needed to in order to take a decent picture, so I took it at an angle on the easel in order to see it. Reflections with a dark painting are a pain. Anyway, its on wood and it's about 8"x 10". This painting is the neighborhood Rachel, my wife, grew up in. Because of her low vision, getting to and from places was and is difficult. During grade school she walked the same route home everyday to make it easier on herself. A number of times she walked home when it was nearly dark. Her night vision is especially bad. The view in the painting is of the last turn to her house. This streetlight helped to guide her way. When she got to it, she knew she was nearly home...........the painting is titled..."The way home".

Crossroads

Crossroads......13"x 15 1/2"...still have to repaint the sky. The lights in this image look really yellow/orange. Not nearly so in person.
So I wanted to paint the place where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his guitar genius. I figured if this legend were really true, it would have to be a relatively benign place. It seems like it would be a simple place and not one of grandiosity. In the story, it was, indeed, near railroad tracks. In this painting we are Robert Johnson, on the railroad tracks of life..Ha!! We are coming to a crossing. We are given a choice. On the right, which is impossible to see here, is a children school crossing sign. This is meant to represent innocence. On the left is a business, which could be a bar, a juke joint, or whatever. It is occupied and open 24 hours, because the devil is always open for business. Life is about choices. Robert Johnson made his. What is mine? What is yours?

Lions in Winter

Finished a new piece...20"x 20" on canvas........It's the winter hideaway of the Cole Brothers Circus. Its fenced off from the road. I have been there a couple of times now in the evening. From the entrance a dirt path winds its way through the complex. Street lights illuminate the path at various points along with a number of trucks parked with circus signs on them. The view down this path is the one I have chosen to paint. Across the street is the old Deland train stop/gas station turned meth lab. Just 50 yards to the east, across the tracks, forming a perfect bizarre triangle, is a bar called the "In Between". In between what I don't know. I stood in the middle of the road the other night with the meth lab people watching me and, I swear to God, yelping like dogs to get my attention. I looked at all three places and wondered if I was at the nexus of some strange, twisted universe. What could these three places possibly have in common? I leaned toward the van and realized the only thing they had in common at that moment was me..............so I got the hell out of there.

Looking north across Pearly Lake towards Mt Monadnock

OK, this is easily the longest titled painting I have done.

4"x 4.5" oil on wood

I finished this a few weeks ago. It is for a couple from Williamstown, MA. They currently live here in Deland, Florida and own 7 of my paintings. Wait.....maybe it's eight. Damn, I should know. Anyway, this was commissioned as a Christmas gift to the mother of the husband. She had been in ill health and at the age of, I think, 93, time was a factor. I finished it just before Thanksgiving, but unfortunately, she passed away before the painting could be given to her. I would have hoped she would have liked it. I did not meet her, but from all that I have heard, she was a good woman who possessed many good qualities, besides raising a fine son. And she lived a very long time, which is the way it should be. Too often, the jerks of the world live forever and the good die young. But this time, humanity won.

This painting is of a lake in New Hampshire near Franklin Pierce University that looks towards Mt Monadnock. Jeff, the husband went to school there and I am sure it has a lot of good memories. If we are lucky enough to go to college, we are sometimes imbued with the belief that we can change the planet and move mountains once we are unleashed on the world.

I tried to do the best I could with this painting. I think it turned out pretty well. As an artist, I am lucky to live this life. It's the only one I will get. I made some small changes to Monadnock and it is now in clearer view and not obstructed by the trees. You know........maybe we can move mountains after all.

The Road

Ah, paintings at night. These are extremely difficult to do. Painting outside is a challenge. I live in Florida and the bugs are numerous and relentless. My single light I use to illuminate the easel also attracts every one of them. I use clove oil with my medium and that smell causes them to fly right into the painting and, of course, stick right to it. I spend a lot of time plucking them off. How fun. Plus, moving my eye from the highly lit board to the near darkness and back again to the board is very taxing on the eyes after about an hour. So I have to do a painting over many nights. However, photographing anything is nearly impossible. To get the light right is so hard given the extremes of light and really, you can't see much in a photo in the very dark areas. When I am standing there, I see the subtle differences. And any bright lights are totally washed out, so I have to take many, many pictures at just one location to get the information I need to make a painting.

This piece is 9"x 16" and its a perfect example of all of the above. Plus, when you are out there in the dark, people wonder what the hell you are doing. I am sure it looks suspicious with the white van, too. But people, I am hanging out a while because I am trying to get this whole painting thing right, not plan some elaborate heist or mugging.