Grateful Notices: Soft Skies, oil on canvas, 20 x 60 in.

 

Exhibited: Page + Waterman Gallery, Wellesley, MAThank you to the collectors that purchased this piece.

About this oil:

This is the longest sky oil I have ever done at this point. The idea came for an earlier series of monotypes with vairous colors and intensities. Of that group, this was the most subtle and I wanted to take that idea from about 40' to 5 feet.

It is not so much a portrait of a place or clouds in time, but a purely compositional arrangement. James Whistler liked to use that work, arrangement and it's very fitting for this piece.

The colors are very subtle but they are changing from left to right and top to bottom in order to create more interest and flow and a lot of attention was given over to a sense of atmosphere, a important feature of this scene.

New Work: Sunset: Cascading Color, oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches

Sunset: Cascading Color
In the studio
$9000 framed   To purchase

About this oil:
Sunsets present numerous opportunities for artists. Having spent most of my life in the art business, I have seen hundreds of sunset paintings and for whatever reason, I have mostly avoided the ‘standard’ scene with the sunset / landscape and I admire the artists that do the same.
 
How can one do a sunset and take it further artistically? After completing Yellow to Orange Sunset with a minimal bit of landscape, I decided on another version for this one with almost half of the landscape as a reflective lake. Now two-thirds of the painting can be given over to color and the high bar is set.
 
The lower landscape is purposely minimal but powerful against the atmospheric sky. The cloud forms went through a lot of changes, compositionally and chromatically and I really enjoyed the process. It was amazing to see how subtle changes would take those cloud forms to new places. All the while, I was aware of the potential power of this piece and kept adding to it.
 
I have no idea how many shifts were made to create this final look – the painting seemed to be finished a number of times, but each time it went forward, the oil gained more strength and interest. Everything is set up to accentuate the glowing colors. The trees are purposely dark to add a strong contrast and the water reflections are muted.
 

Winter Light I, oil on canvas, 30 X 40 inches

 

Oil on canvas 30 X 40 inches

In the studio, $5600 framed  To purchase

 
About this oil:
I was immediately drawn to those trees nestled together in the snow. While driving on a high altitude, Colorado backroad toward the end of the day, I got this photograph of the view. The colors were very washed out in the photo and that was just fine with me. Now I was free to make something new and with colors far more vivid and different from the actual scene.
 
Painting in the high-contrast trees against the snow in purple blues, the oil gained power quickly. Now I had the option of keeping the monochromatic colors at the bottom to include the entire oil or to take the upper portion of the scene in a different, but equally interesting direction.
 
Skies create wonderful opportunities and I took the opening to bring in more color. I kept the last-light quality and soft focus, keeping the oil on the subdued side.
 
Once the work was completed, I was surprised to see that those powerful, dark trees in the front had been equaled by the colorful background ridge line and clouds – a nice balance and unexpected outcome!

Winter Light II, oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches

Winter Light II
Oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches 
In the studio, $9900 framed   To purchase
 
About this oil:
This is the second version of Winter Light representing the scene off a high altitude, backroad in Colorado. Working from pale-color photographs, I painted both versions at the same time and thoroughly enjoyed working with similar compositions that yielded very different outcomes. 
 
For this second version, the blues are more predominant, varied and combined with a variety of teals purples and yellow. The sky is equally balanced against the dark trees and bright areas. To create that effect, the clouds demanded more complexity and depth and I was glad to follow along. 
 
My goal was to create a more complex, large format piece, more powerful than the smaller, more poetic version and happily, both oils succeeded, each in their own way.

Grateful Notices: Finding the Light, oil on canvas, 48 x 36 inches

 

Oil on canvas, 48 x 36 inches, framed in a pure gold float frame

Exhibited: Breckenridge Gallery, Breckenridge, CO

My grateful thanks to the private collector that purchased this oil.

About this oil:

As I was painting this oil, my mind would often go to a couple of artists that lived in the same town, Monet and Bonnard. They were both ‘dabbers’ with Monet saying he never finished a painting and Bonnard with this story, “When he had mixed a new colour that was just right, he would revisit and retouch old work. Once, he persuaded his friend and fellow Symbolist Édouard Vuillard to distract a museum guard whilst he added his latest colour to a hung painting.”

Quoted from the Port Magazine

To begin this piece, I pulled out an older canvas that was at a dead end. I had struggled mightily with it, resulting in a very thick veneer of paint. Perfect! For this new composition, I welcomed the ready-made texture and began to lay in the general outlines of this work.

The plan was to create a fully impressionist work with hundreds of marks to create the effect of tightly packed vegetation, but with the illusion of light and space. The arrangement was a simple one and open to colors of all kinds.

With these open brushstrokes, it quickly became apparent that each mark had a meaning. Some colors became backgrounds and others moved forward in the space differently. It was a bit like 3-D chess and a real delight to participate in a work that was essentially painting itself and bringing me along for the ride.