Artist Studio
The painting is a quick study in opaque watercolor for several other paintings I did of the same subject. I like the direct brushwork and muted colors I can get with the opaque paint. Being able to put the lights on top of the darks allows me to define the light without having to cut
A pleasant walk to nowhere
Along a peaceful country road
Morning’s blue mountains
call
Can I lighten up your load
I can’t fish, I just don’t like hurting worms or fish but probably it’s because I never catch anything. I don’t seem to have the patience but I love the serenity of watching people do it. Whether they are on the side of a pier, in the river or on the banks of the Potomac, I just get lost in the quiet and peacefulness of the activity. This painting is all about the beauty of early morning fishing and how small humans are in comparison to nature. It is all about perspective and acceptance.
This painting and poem is based on a morning in the Kalahari Desert, when the sun was extremely bright and the temperatures were quickly rising. We were headed to Deception Valley and I just felt an unbelievable attachment to the land and all those who had walked this ground for as long as we have been on the planet.
In this painting I am really trying to focus on the sunset without it becoming a cliche. I kept everything dark and without description and then built the paint up in the sky to bring the light forward. This is a view of our lake at sunset and the poem is a reflection on duality and choices between negative and positive. Its what we choose to focus on.
This painting is from an image of a really cold February morning at a farm in Upperville, VA. I was out walking before sunrise and was struck by the absolute still frozen air and the spectacular colors of a winter sunrise. I tried to capture the light that sort of floats on the darkness as
This painting is a metaphor for all of the rural beauty that is being lost to urban sprawl. I used a palette knife to paint most of it and it was a demonstration for my Friday class but I finished it at home. Take the time to look and appreciate, the soon to be gone, farms, barns and fields, they are more than just quaint buildings; they are our past. They reflect the society we were before we became virtual and gadget oriented.
Vultures like skaters
Carving figures on clear ice,
Glide gracefully in circles,
Waltzing on thermals
We stand hypnotized by flight
I finished this painting last week, which I did as a demonstration in Rockland Maine in September. I had to correct a few values that were a little wobbly. The water behind the rocks and gulls was too light making it impossible to see the birds. The water under the rocks needed some darker reflections
This painting and poem are about a day spent painting during the winter a few years back. I painted in absolutely cold weather in watercolor with vodka put in the water to keep it from freezing. The painting was not fabulous but I learned a lot as I always do outdoors. I painted this oil
This sunset painting was a demonstration for one of my classes. I was trying to explain the concept of value control and how value affects color. If the color is wrong most times its the value that is off. Analyze the values in the major shapes and keep relating those values to the ones that
This was a watercolor based on an image of early morning on Penopscot Bay this last September. The goal was to capture the darkness of morning and pull the light out with a crisp simple lift. I also wanted to capture with direct expressive brushwork the feeling, not the details, of the forward trees. 1