Morning Bling

"A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked" - Bernard Meltzer

This painting is 5 x 7 oil on canvas panel. Please call me, email me, or click here if you'd like to buy this sunlit cadbury creme egg painting.

15

Give Light and the people will find their own way.
Scripps-Howard newspapers, motto.

This painting is 11 x 8 oil on hardboard. Please call me, email me, or click here if you'd like to buy this painting.

The Biggs Museum opening on Friday was excellent. We ran into a lot of people we knew, including Jeffrey Todd Moore (or, as we lovingly call him, Jeff # 2) as well as my Uncle John. It was so crowded we had a hard time moving around.

Sun

Break forth o beauteous heavenly Light, and usher in the morning
Come, quickly come, and let Thy glory shine, gilding out darksome heaven with rays divine
(Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), The Christmas Oratorio, 1734)

This painting is 8 x 6 oil on canvas panel.

Tonight is the Biggs Picture: First Look pARTy opening reception in Dover. The exhibition will be up until June 19th. If you can't make it, a review can be found here.

Biggs Museum of American Art
406 Federal Street
Dover, DE 19901
302.674.2111

Moon

"Aim for the moon. If you miss, you may hit a star." -W. Clement Stone

This painting is 7" X 5" oil on hardboard.

Just Before Sunset

"Sometimes the gods have no taste at all. They allow sunrises and sunsets in ridiculous pink and blue hues that any professional artist would dismiss as the work of some enthusiastic amateur who'd never looked at a real sunset." -Terry Pratchett, The Thief of Time, 2001

This painting is 8 x 6 oil on canvas panel. Please call me, email me, or click here if you'd like to buy this painting.

Red Truck

"When snow falls, nature listens."  - Antoinette van Kleeff

 This painting is 6" X 8" oil on canvas panel.

Corner

“None of us knows what the next change is going to be, what unexpected opportunity is just around the corner, waiting a few months or a few years to change all the tenor of our lives.” - Kathleen Norris

This painting is 7 x 5 oil on canvas panel. Please call me, email me, or click here if you'd like to buy this painting.

Orange Chimneys

 "Simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication" - Leonardo da Vinci

This painting is 7 x 5 oil on canvas panel. 

Silver & Gold Kisses


“The wife yearns for gold and silver, and her friends, the senses, yearn for good food.” 
- Sri Guru Granth Sahib

This painting is 7 x 5 oil on canvas panel. This painting has sold but you can see the print if you click here.
This painting was a little experimental, I used a black ground instead of orange and I really like the effect it had on the highlights in the foil. Happy Valentine's Day everybody!

Light Through a Tree

 “Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.” - Abraham Lincoln

This painting is 8 x 6 oil on canvas panel. Please call me, email me, or click here if you'd like to buy this painting.

Suburban Sparkle

 “Houses are built to live in and not to look on.” - Sir Francis Bacon

I respectfully disagree Mr. Bacon. You would think that with a cool name like Bacon the guy would know something. This painting is 8 x 6 oil on canvas panel Please call me, email me, or click here if you'd like to buy this painting.

Sunny Patch

 "Buy land. They've stopped making it." - Mark Twain

This painting is 6 x 6 oil on hardboard. Please call me, email me, or click here if you'd like to buy this painting.

Reception

Number of minutes that Mir's Russian cosmonauts spent advertising a "space pen" live on QVC while orbiting the earth in 1998: 15 (Harper's Index Book Volume 3. 105)

This painting is 7 x 5 oil on hardboard. Please call me, email me, or click here if you'd like to buy this painting.

First Kiss


Ratio of husbands who say they fell in love with their spouse at first sight to wives who say this : 2 :1 (Harper's Index Book Volume 3. 146)


This painting is 8 x 6 oil on canvas panel. This painting is still wet and should be dry in a couple of weeks. Please call me, email me, or click here if you'd like to buy this painting.

Orange Cabin Door

 “A cabin with plenty of food is better than a hungry castle” - Irish Saying

This painting has already sold. Please click here if you'd like to see other paintings or prints for sale.

I received my acceptance into the Biggs Picture: Landscapes by Regional Artists exhibition on Friday. The exhibit, at the Biggs Museum of American Art, features landscapes in three different categories; Landscapes of the Mind, Constructed Landscapes & Perceived Landscapes. You probably guessed but my entry was in the perceived category. The painting that was accepted, Up, will go on display March 4 and will be on exhibit until June 21.

Up, 12 x 9 oil on hardboard. Part of the Biggs Picture exhibition starting in March.

Parking Lot Paradise


 "It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are... than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise." - Henry David Thoreau

This painting is 7 x 5 oil on canvas panel. Please call me, email me, or click here if you'd like to buy this painting.

Floating Colors

 "After an orange cloud — formed as a result of a dust storm over the Sahara and caught up by air currents — reached the Philippines and settled there with rain, I understood that we are all sailing in the same boat." — Vladimir Kovalyonok

This painting is 5 x 7 oil on canvas panel. Please call me, email me, or click here if you'd like to buy this painting.

January is a good month for change. It's good because it signifies the start of a new year and it is named after the Roman god of beginnings and endings.  Also, it is so stupid cold and snowy here. I find myself inside more than outside and this causes me to take my painting techniques in new directions.

Below is a picture of the underpainting for the finished painting above. To everyone that has asked how I start my paintings, I use a wash of dull orange and use a burnt umber/prussian blue mix to rough in the painting.  I thin both  with turpentine to a watercolor-like consistency and I let it all dry before finishing. This helps me keep some of my tones in check and adds an additional layer of interest when it peeks through.

Underpainting
I added the orange color and the drying step last January after some experimentation and I've been really happy with the results so far. Hear that? That's the meditative power of painting reminding you to step just a bit to the left (or right) of your comfort zone. 

Winter Lace

"I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter.  Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show."  -Andrew Wyeth

This painting is 7" X 5" oil on canvas panel. Please call me, email me, or click here if you'd like to buy this painting.

Charm City Warehouse

"Trade isn't about goods. Trade is about information. Goods sit in the warehouse until information moves them."  - C. J. Cherryh 

This painting is 6 x 8 oil on canvas panel. Please call me, email me, or click here if you'd like to buy this painting.

I'm not sure what it is but I still get excited when my car's odometer clicks over every 100,000 miles. My 2005 Toyota Prius has now allowed me to enjoy that excitement twice. My Cadillac didn't quite make it and my Sebring was close at 197,000. Here's to you, Prius! Onward & upward to 300,000 miles.
January 2011
August 2008

I received my jurors' comments from my 2011 Delaware Arts Council grant decision today. Sadly, no grant, but I did get great comments and valuable feedback. I always love to know how people are responding to my work. Below are the comments...

- You are beginning to achieve the "poetic" quality you wrote about in your artist statement - especially in "House By The Road"


- Consider making some sustained, ambitions and larger paintings from observation, or in the studio from studies done on site.