Boreas Sanctus
Showroom
July 7th, 2012
Cox Reservation, Essex MA
Oil on Canvas, 16 x 22 in
(sold)
I painted this while sadly contemplating Ray Allen’s decision to leave Boston (Celtics) for the Miami Heat. Now every time I see it I see Ray in that tree, standing alone, trying to make the right choice… I do wish him the best of everything but championship titles.
July 3rd & 4th, 2012
Oil on Wood, 20¾ x 31½ in
(sold)
Although this was done out doors, thus could be called “Plein Air,” I was working from a photo and memory and whim. Well whim is too light a word for it, my spirits had sunk as I was pondering how my once pristine, quiet paradise of the Island has become overrun with loud boats, loud people, cabins where there were only trees, docks where there were only deer runs. I know the universe trends to destruction and I know I’m as much a cause of it as anyone. I hope that there is a heaven where all the ideal and perfect remain and grow better, the inverse of this system. In the meantime, I love to contemplate the storms that make us all alone and equally vulnerable to a nature that is bigger and stronger than anyone likes to consider. I love the chaos of clouds and water and the order that ricochets through them. And as much as saying so may convict me by a jury of my peers, I like painting water and sky from photographs. Studying a single moment in time, a snap shot of water and atmosphere stilled, is so invaluable to understanding the behavior and pattern of reflection, refraction, buoyancy and motion. Although I am converted to believe painting outdoors in the moment is the only and best way to paint a landscape, I am not a fundamentalist who eschews our technical capacities as unworthy. If we are able to isolate a moment in time to study water, I will undertake the education.
Logan
June 18th & 19th, 2012
Tewksbury, MA
Oil on Canvasboard, 16 x 20 in
(nfs)
I decided to try a new brush that I have while waiting for my knives to arrive. I also thought I might like to try painting a dog or cat, in real time, as a precursor to trying a live portrait sometime. I set everything up and followed the dogs to a spot they seemed liable to stay in for a while. I gave them each a long-chewing bone, which I figured would keep them immobile for at least an hour. I began to mix up my colors, and by the time I was ready to go, the dogs were choking down the last bits of their chews and off to examine the world. So I thought I’d try painting the grass, and wait for them to come back. Painting the grass with a brush wasn’t fun. I kept at it but kept failing. Then the dogs came back, and about 5 times, I got their bodies blocked in, about to inflict some detail, when they got up and left. Eventually it all got so frustrating, and the canvas so ugly, that I got angry and let fly – abandoning the brush and using an old knife, and using a dog picture I had on my phone for structure and the dogs themselves for colour and inference.
June 11th & 12th, 2012
Hostas and the Path, Tewksbury MA
(sold)
I just finished this (15 mins ago) and still like to see it in the environment in which I painted it, though the angle of the photo is different from that of the scene. Again, trying to understand light and shadow and how it affects colour. There are a lot of pine buds all over the canvas and myself.
May 26th, 2012
Cox Reservation, Essex MA
Oil on Wood, 24 x 18 in
(sold)
Last week and this week I chose subjects that are challenging to me – all this close vegetation and the sky through an umbrella of trees present a huge tangle of relationships of light and shadow, colour and contrast, and warmth and cold (tones.) I like this one better than last week’s. Last week I got a lot of compliments from passers by as I worked, this week, not so. As I say too often, probably, if you really want to hit a high note of beauty, you have to have the courage to wade deep through lots of ugly to get there. This was really ugly for a long time as it slowly came into itself, but I feel like, for me, it made it through to the other side. (See this beside the photo I took of the composition before I started painting – scroll to the bottom of “Matching Scene to Painting.”)
April 17th, 2012
(sold)
This is a birch tree, and the funny light that comes in a clearing between two storms. Although I don’t like painting from photos, I was homesick for the lake (Lake of the Woods, Ontario, Canada) so I painted it.