New Oils - Friends - St. Basil`s

                                                  Bryant Marsh oil on canvas 20x20

 I`m having trouble moving on from winter, I always do. So I`ll paint it all through the warm months ahead. The big meadow in Bryant Woods is flanked by two wetlands that bristle with bare branch intensity. There is always something interesting to paint in winter.

                                                      Pismo Lagoon oil on canvas 20x16

 This was painted soon after my return from California last February. The monarch butterflies roost in this Eucalyptus Grove less than a mile away from the sea. This is one of the destinations of their long annual migration. If that weren`t enough, calm  beautiful sloughs of brackish water meander through the trees and nearby dunes a stones throw away from an RV park and a campground. The sublime and the utilitarian side by side. California style.

                                                           Morning Pond oil on Yupo 11x14

 Another wetland this time in early fall. I painted this over a failed watercolor and felt avenged.

                                     Pool in the Rocks oil on canvas 18x60 2011

 A quiet spot above Oswego Creek in early Spring.


 My buddy Jo Reimer has a show opening May 16 at the beautiful Hillsboro Public Library. It will be up all of May and June.
 Years ago we met through email when she wrote to ask for advice on what to see on her trip to northern New Mexico. A couple of years later she wanted to 'study' with me and I said come over and let`s talk first. She arrived with a pie, I`ve loved her ever since.
 She taught home economics once upon a time and has a deep understanding of all the domestic arts. After teaching she focused on textiles especially quilting and embroidery. She is a cunning shopper and began a business of escorting bargain hunters to East Asia. From that experience she began a new business of designing clothes for travelers. She can cook up a feast, her garden is gorgeous, she co-designed her house, she can make a dress in about five minutes and she`s generous with all that she knows. Once women like her were common, they had to be. Now in a world of specialists, mechanization and out sourcing, a single individual with so much talent, ability and knowledge is rare.
 She also made these visually rich collages which are among the works at the Library;

 If you`re off to the coast, make a brief detour in Hillsboro and see what she can do!

 Speaking of friends, look what Don Gray just painted;

                                      Expanse #2 oil on cradled panel 24x24 [Don Gray]

 This is a masterpiece!
A good seascape bears a complex emotional 'message'. We are reminded we are integral to something far larger and more marvelous than ourselves but also how we exist here for such a brief moment. 'Make the most of it, you will not pass this way again'. This painting aches.

 All of the sudden she collapses, is rushed to the hospital, then silence... Hey, what happened to Joni Mitchell? Then we are told she`s in a coma and a friend has been given power of attorney. An hour later, it`s no, she`s alert and expected to recover! BUT she won`t be well enough to appear in court for three to four months! Why does she have to go court anyway? Poor Joni. Has anyone ever been able to articulate elation and disillusion like her? Every sensitive soul of my generation venerates her. Justly. Listen;

A Case of You 1974

Guess?
Just the coolest building in the whole world! I have been obsessed with this place since I was a boy. And it was begun in 1555! St. Basil`s Cathedral in Moscow might be the only reason I would visit Russia right now. The government`s new persecution of gay and transgendered people is inexcusable and must not be allowed to continue without protest from the rest of civilization. Wasn`t this a new liberal democracy just a while ago? Unbelievable!

 Could you imagine this man as president?;

 I could. A little 'socialism' is exactly what our country needs right now.


work for sale in my studio

I have a solo show at La Boca al Lupo Fine Art  Nov-Dec 2015
my monthly studio demonstration is suspended for now

Canyon Pool and other New Watermedia

                                                    Canyon Pool watercolor 14x11

                                                End of Winter Study watermedia 8x8

                                                  Feuchtwinterwald watermedia 15x9

Soon I`ll be an oil painter again but I spent another week with watermedia. It always seems like a 'lighter' cleaner process appropriate for Spring.
 

work for sale in my studio

Winter Oneanta - California - I-pad!

                                                         oil on Yupo 12x9

 From January.

 It`s interesting returning to my home state of California and seeing what it has become. Always the model for the rest of the country, technologies, ideas, and politics get tested here first.
 The air was so bad when I left in 1972, it hurt to breathe. Mountains just a few miles away were invisible unless the wind howled. Very bleak. Then they tried bold strategies involving auto emission standards to barbecuing regulations. It got cleaner!
Even with millions more living there now, it`s a much better, nicer place.
 This was a rare and perfect time to visit the central coast. It had rained. Once predictably annual in winter, it is now very special.  Enough had fallen for the landscape to become green;

                                                        Marcia Burtt`s ranch

 We saw some unusual landscapes;

                                                         Eucalyptus Forest

                                                             Lagoon

                                                          Coastal Marsh

 My friends were well and generous with their time and attention. California suits them and they deserve its pleasures. My plein air adventure with Marcia Burtt was fun though we did more talking than painting. This is defensible, she is quite interesting and artists are alone so much of the time. This oak tree is almost, but not quite complete;

                                                        Unfinished 21x20

 What really got me excited was the progress I made in understanding the painting app Art Rage for I-pad. I played with it on the plane and finally made some sense of it. Ever since seeing David Hockney`s efforts, I`ve been intrigued. If he can do it, so can I. There are probably newer and easier programs now but this is the one I have. Making the abstract 'painting' below had me transfixed from San Francisco to Portland. It`s just a doodle but I learned how to use some of the tools.

 The portability and convenience make this so appealing! I could sit comfortably in my lawn chair while everyone struggles to unfold their French easels in the proper sequence.

 In April, we`re going to spend a night here. I`ve always wanted to just stand in a houseboat. This is going to be fun!

 Wouldn`t you love to hear what he made that thing do?

work for sale in my studio

next studio demonstration is Sat. March 14, 10 am

Lichen Light + Maynard Dixon

                                                               oil on Yupo 20x16

 Like islands, the Portland area has small volcanic hills all over. Some of them near the rivers, have gnarled oak forests on top. By their look, you`d think they braved howling winds and sub-zero temperatures. They are stunted like bonsai. In  winter, minus their leaves, you can see the smaller branches which are cloaked in feathery lichens which glow in the reflected light.

 I think I was following links for the great painter of the Southwest, Maynard Dixon, when I stumbled on the blog California Desert Art. Here was writing dedicated to many famous and some forgotten painters who lived and worked in the Coachella Valley and Mojave Desert. Often they were associated with the California Impressionists but some were idiosyncratic painters. Maybe because I lived there,  I`m fascinated with the culture and times of these artists. Ann Japenga, the author of this unusual blog, just wrote a little account of my recent trip there. Last year when I was trying to sell my mother`s big San Andreas Canyon painting, I asked Ann to put out the word, thinking someone in her local audience might be interested. I had painted it there in 1979 but now, it was too big for Mom`s new, assisted living apartment. For any readers unfamiliar with Maynard Dixon, he is well worth discovering. This is what the wonderful writer Thomas McGuane says about him; To me, no painter has ever quite understood the light, the distances, the aboriginal ghostliness of the American West as well as Maynard Dixon. The great mood of his work is solitude, the effect of land and space on people. While his work stands perfectly well on its claims to beauty, it offers a spiritual view of the West indispensable to anyone who would understand it. Here is a documentary on his life and work.
 In 10 days I`m returning to the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology on the Oregon coast to paint during the month of March. I`ll focus on the alder groves and plan to explore the wetlands of the Salmon River Estuary and Nestucca Bay.


available work in the studio