Hope

                                                   Windbreak oil on canvas 40x30 inches

 The two weeks between the debate and the assassination attempt were really tough on my mental health. I felt adrenaline in my system daily as it seemed I was just waiting for slaughter in the fall election.We saw profound confusion in President Biden during the debate and that is not right for the most powerful office in the world. Both my parents had some dementia in their last years though it came and went. I believed Biden had to withdraw or he would be the primary issue throughout the campaign. Friends, family, AOC and Bernie Sanders disagreed. Thank God for Nancy Pelosi!! Again! Seriously, what a warrior! She could tell that the gains of the last 15 years were about to be wiped out. Her legacy along with Bidens' and Obamas' Again, it wasn`t that Trump gained votes from the disastrous debate, it was that so many would be discouraged and wouldn`t vote at all. The  cult of the Republican Party would sweep congress and the presidency and further embolden a radical supreme court.  At least now I have hope. Now we can stop what seemed inevitable after the bullet missed its target. Their convention was like the second coming of Christ and all I could feel was doom. We cannot let that happen. Trump should never be president again.

 I believe the marvelous upwelling of support for Kamala Harris began in utter relief. We will see if she has the character and imagination to meet this moment [looks promising!] and advocate for a future we want to live in.

I`m curious to hear what the [likely] Madame President has to say.

                                                                        Mendocino

When I was 18 I had a semester of art school in Mendocino Calif. The school was really oriented more towards crafts but I wanted to be there because of the extraordinary setting. My dorm room was adjacent to an immense meadow that ended at the headlands overlooking the ocean. Also at the edge was the local high school. A double row of Monterey Cypress had been planted at the western side of their football field to act as a windbreak. I would climb into the tree at the start of the row and look down the tunnel or out to the sea. It was truly awesome. The painting above was an attempt to paint those trees from a 52 year old memory. The painting below is a small egg tempera of my perch up in the tree that I did at the time.

                                                                Mendocino Cypress

 Below are new watercolors painted on location then cleaned up in my studio;

[no titles yet]

And this painting inspired by the local streams;

                                             Oswego Creek oil on canvas 16x16 inches

                                                                 David Shrigley

                                                                       David Shrigley

                                                                    David Shrigley

I love David Shrigley. I think his work would be called conceptual art. It`s his goofy humanity for me. Look at this wonderful video interview. Such a lovely man.

 The second annual Lake Oswego Open Studios will happen this year at the end of September. For those who don`t know what this is about, an open studios tour is a self guided visit to dozens of artists studios open that weekend for guests. By looking through the website, you can decide which artists you`d like to visit. I was a founding member of the board  and though I am no longer,  I love and support this introduction of artists to the community. It`s fun!

For many years I participated in the Portland version and realized there were enough artists in Lake Oswego to do our own. So we did. This may be the last year I do this however, it depends. No matter how prepared I am or how successful the event proves to be, there is always an emotional whiplash I don`t understand and it takes too long to work through it. Solitude really is best for creating.

click HERE for work for sale in my studio

HERE for prints

watercolor, collage, pride

 

                                                Algodones 2 watercolor on Yupo 26x20 inches

                               Spring Leaves, Iron Mountain watercolor on Yupo 26x20 inches

                                               North Coast watermedia on Yupo 35x23 inches

June 26 and 71 degrees at 4 pm? Thank you! 

Our day will come. By this date three years ago, a 'heat dome' had parked over the Pacific Northwest killing hundreds. I`m grateful for todays cool beauty.

Once again it is Pride month. My community of Lake Oswego celebrated its first Pride Event. We went early having no idea what to expect and wanting to be visible bodies if the crowd was small. It wasn`t.

 It is a unique honor and privilege to have lived in this era. Within my lifetime, within my culture, homosexuality has gone from unspeakably disgusting to widely accepted. And for one month, actually elevated. It is still disorienting but when I remember that my Christian mother was there at my wedding, I just feel blessed.

New collages;

                                       Furtive Movement watercolor on yupo collage 14x11 inches

                                          Floating Gate watercolor on yupo collage 12x9 inches

                             Each Flower Tracks the Moon watercolor on yupo collage 14x11 inches

                                     Bikram Dilemma watercolor on yupo collage 26x20 inches

 I`m trying to figure out why making collages is such a different experience from painting. The collages are completely engrossing with time awareness lost almost immediately. When I paint, I`m often waiting for something to 'set up', thinking intently about early 'layers', examining my ultimate visual 'reason' for painting a particular subject and then trying many different techniques to find the one best for this part of this project. Lots of thought! Until, if I`m fortunate, something better takes over. I think most painters paint for this sublime occurrence. When all the processes become harmonized, the angst has vanished and there is an understanding that something special is happening. Each choice makes perfect sense and looks wildly fresh. What a validation and yet totally independent of everything! You can never make it happen only be there when it does with a brush in your hand. Most of the time for me, painting is a complex mental moral entanglement that must be solved. This is why when I try to bring new insights into my process and it still ends up looking  like other RDTs, I`m exasperated. It`s like no matter what  exciting things are happening in the brain, the hand only knows one way of acting.

 These are from last winter, watercolor on Yupo 12 inch diameter. The fabulous Ginny Zanger told me yupo was now being made into circles, so I wanted to try them. Honestly, it wasn`t a great experience. There was a vertigo quality in making them, like they wouldn`t hold still. I even did some abstractions but they seemed unmoored altogether. I like the way they look but getting there was weird.

A neighbors irises. They stopped me on my walk and the more I looked at them I felt certain that their beauty was by design. Someone had thought about those colors and their placement. What a gorgeous carefree patch of life. For me anyway.

                                    

 I have been and known many lonely hearts. This woman found the biggest love of all. From the NYTimes, Modern Love

Finally Finding “The Magic”

Since childhood, I yearned for love. Once, I came within weeks of marriage before it abruptly fell apart. He said we were missing “the magic,” and, admittedly, he was right. A few men came and went. I’m now 59 with Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. I still don’t have a partner, but I’ve fallen desperately in love with life. Exquisite beauty emerges everywhere: my cat on my lap, a cashier extending an unexpected smile, sunlight skipping across a lake. I use each day to soak up the world’s splendor. “Not yet,” I whisper to the heavens. “I love it here.” — Clare Cory

It was time for a new one. Some of you longtime readers might remember when that upper palette was new 12 years ago. It looks so awful because I couldn`t keep acrylic paint away from it. My painting process often required watercolor and acrylic applications at the same time. No regrets though now being older, I`m going to try to keep them separated. I`ve rearranged my studio setup to allow enough space for both. If I can actually pull that off, there is hope.

This is a photo of the delta of the Sacramento River I took from a plane a couple of weeks ago. I`ve been curious about it as it was the subject of the last body of work by the late Wayne Thiebaud. Often confused with pop artists, his wonderful work was representational and broadly appealing. The paintings that made him famous long ago were of desserts and deli counters.

                                                                    Wayne Thiebaud

Wayne Thiebaud lived to be 100 and these later paintings were based on the rich agricultural fields of the delta. The productive lands are not a tourist attraction so I`ve never seen them. I`m looking out the window and suddenly there it is! It`s so cool what you can see if the weather is cooperative. Flying down to see my family, we saw a moody Crater Lake and on the return,  saw Morrow Rock and then the Salinas Valley before the delta appeared. Twice before I`ve been able to pick out the landmarks of Yosemite as we flew by. Anyway, Thiebaud was a remarkable painter and by every account a splendid human being. He seems to have had a foundational curiosity and humility that took him far.

                                                                     Wayne Thiebaud

                                                                    Wayne Thiebaud

                                                                    Wayne Thiebaud

I don`t know how or why. Facebook is now sending me the best stuff my heart could desire. Essays by James Baldwin and Susan Sontag, poems by the familiar and unfamiliar, anecdotes about Joni Mitchell and Patti Smith and remembrances of W H Auden and Joseph Campbell. I love it. Facebook gets me at last.

Read this astonishing poem; 

Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic-decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in though the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity. ~Louise Erdrich

 My last plein air effort. Not great but better than my average. Probably because I was sitting next to Jean Gale. Good things happen when she comes around.

god I love Roz Chast

work for sale in my studio - click Here

End of June

                                            The Last Oregon Refuge oil on canvas 56x44 inches

 On a sunny June day in 2012 I was walking around the Finley Wildlife Refuge for the first time. Up at the top of a meadowed hill stood a stand of oaks silhouetted against the some thunderheads. This simple composition became a subject for many small paintings and now this larger one. With only three sections I could play with my abstract expressionist impulses yet still have a credible landscape when I finished. I learned definitively, a couple of years ago with pandemic abstractions, having a recognizable subject gave me the most freedom. To see what I could make paint do.

 Now that I`m making progress separating the act of painting from the importance of presenting it, the promotional aspect of my blog is gone. I don`t want to stop it, I`ve heard many times that people want to read it. However, I forget about it. Sorry I`ve been away so long.

 I finally got the train trip to Calif in late April after it was cancelled by Amtrak in January due to atmospheric rivers. So worth the wait! I have never seen Calif. look so lush. Everywhere! There was evidence of flooding all around as well. I also saw near every single town and city, homeless encampments. Maybe hitching rides on freight trains is coming back? Or do train tracks inspire congregating somehow? I tell you one thing, it is not just Portland and San Francisco with this vexing issue. It`s coming for the rest of the country too. With low unemployment even, this population just keeps growing. It is clearly evident that the working poor cannot afford housing. How the United States tackles this matter will determine the kind of country we become. My political instincts tell me we all will pay more taxes to ease this catastrophe and hopefully we will make the rich pay proportionally more. That`s if we want humane solutions. We can look to India and Brazil and see what happens if we don`t.

                                                         Los Angeles during lockdown

 Growing up, I never thought I would fall in love with California. I couldn`t wait to get out. While I was away, the state got its act together. Because the state Republican Party came down hard on illegal immigration in a nakedly racist way, generations of Hispanic voters swept them out of power long ago. There is no utopia anywhere, much less Calif., but I have never seen such racial integration anywhere else. My brother is one of only two old white men on his Orange County street. I had low expectations for my trip because it had been delayed among other reasons and that is the exact condition necessary for the marvelous. No great events just beautiful food and the comfort of being loved. I even had one whole day with an old friend thinking I had covid. Yet we still had fun. She was certainly sick and testing positive with the home test. Then negative. I was trying to figure out what I should do with my vacation. Finally we realized we needed real information and went to a clinic. Negative for covid, strep throat, and RSV. Eventually she was treated for a respiratory infection and I was unscathed and went on to see my family further south. My homestate feels like it recovered from a terrible war and every time I visit I am amazed and grateful. Just walking through the neighborhoods I encountered smells that took me back in an instant to being a boy in the sunlight. 

more paintings;

                                                   Bog End oil on canvas 20x16 inches

 I was using a time limit with this one. I document what I`ve done each night as I leave the studio. With certain paintings, actually quite a few, I don`t seem to improve them much at all beyond the first few sessions. What does that mean?? I`m laboring for nothing? As I`ve said, I could fill a large gallery with work I destroyed [seemingly] prematurely. Or is this just some Randall-perverse nonsense? I do know if I`ve worked on something a lot, when I finally give up, I can`t stand the sight of it. I`m trying now to just set them aside out of view. If you`ve ever been trapped painting something for a long time without resolution, it is a truly defeated emotion.

 

                                                   In Champoeg oil on canvas 16x16

 For a recent birthday of Johns`, we went for a hike in Champoeg State Park. Oregon is well known for having a superb collection of state parks and this is one of the best. It is named after the son of Sacajawea, the baby she carried with Lewis and Clark and their Corp of Discovery. We walked along this stream after it had flooded scouring the banks and leaving heaps of branches and grasses along the way.  It looked both scrubbed and trashed. Mighty nature!

                                                  August Bog oil on canvas 16x16 inches

 The same swampy corner of Bryant Woods as 'Bog End' above. There is a old culvert there draining a wetland that was probably too wet for an orchard. This local nature park was once someones home.

                                                  Undergrove   oil on canvas 20x20 inches

 A small stand of trees on the other side of Bryant Woods. Here too, the ground is wet and the trees either have or adapted to have a larger foot at the base of the tree. Sort of like a hoof.

                                         End of the Island acrylic and oil on canvas 20x16 inches

                                                                          plein air

 I`m painting outdoors again though this year I`m using acrylics. I hoped for complete paintings from each session but that hasn`t happened. But I bring home something I can develop further in my studio. In oils which have the most versatility of all the different mediums. I think this two step method has promise.

                                               Riverside acrylic and oil on canvas 16x20 inches

                                                                            plein air

 Another begun with acrylics out in the field, then finished with oils in my studio.

                                          Cooks Butte Winter watercolor on Yupo 26x40 inches

 This big watercolor claimed way too much of my winter. I wanted a distinctly bleak landscape that was beat up looking and scrappy. Downed trees and brush now fully visible with the maples leafless in winter. Well I think I succeeded but I don`t want to look at it. That is my clear and simple test for quality. So I think I just decided a phase two. I will seal it with acrylic varnish and go back into it with oil paint. Yupo, being plastic, will not be damaged by the acidic oil paints.

When a close friend went off on the immediate threat of Artificial Intelligence, I was startled. Something this big and I hadn`t even noticed the approach? Well to be honest, it has never seemed like a plausible risk even though I have read a lot about it in science fiction. The 'problem' can certainly evolve but in my lifetime, I think I`m safe.

Then right on time, I run into this article about the good to come from AI. If the issue has your attention, read these optimistic view points. You`ll feel better.

 Not much to say. What is happening now is an obvious political ploy to make ignorant people outraged. Conservatives do this in their effort to stymie progress. It`s hurtful for sure. Portraying gay people as a threat to children is evil. They have always tried to tie pedophilia to homosexuality. Stir up disgust and anger. I have chosen to ignore this all my adult life. I like kids and I sure do empathize with their confusion. I have been a Big Brother, an arts mentor in Celebrate Youth and I was a reader with children in the local SMART program. I have nieces and nephews I enjoyed very much when they were young. I never tried to preemptively assure anyone that I could be trusted. I knew who I was and knew I had a lot to give in being with children. And a lot to learn since I would never have my own. 

 For the lovers of the masterpiece 'Dune', this was just too good. The original only, not the ridiculous sequels.

A new little piece done with my new graphite watercolors! Six shades of gray from Kuretake of Japan.

                                                                  Elizabeth Cummings

Elizabeth Cummings is about my favorite living painter. She`s an elder and still one of the most inventive painters.

click HERE for available work in my studio

 

Happy New Year?

                                     Outback watermedia on yupo 26x40 inches 66x101 cm


 It was a sad beginning of the new year and it started before Christmas. The impeachment debate in Congress was so utterly discouraging. A whole political party stonewalling the constitution, undermining our democracy and pretending that the President`s behavior was normal. The holiday arrives and I`m blindsided by grief once again, missing the half of my original family that`s gone. The fires in Australia just get worse and worse, people are camped on the beach or in boats trying to escape,  while millions upon millions of innocent animals perish. On the West Coast of the US we have seen voracious fire storms in recent years so it is extremely imaginable. The terror and loss of life and habitat are overwhelming. Then our commander in chief takes out an important, if evil, Iranian general to prove something that is never clear. For several days it seems we are on the brink of war!
Not the calm beginning I wanted. January is best when it`s quiet and productive but 2020 has been anxious and dispiriting.
 At least, finally!, an Evangelical Christian leader spoke truth to power and said what most people think. He is morally unfit for office and should be removed.
 I hope the Iranians really have concluded their almost symbolic retaliation. I hope Australia cools down in a widespread rain. I hope against hope the Republican party will put their country first.
 The painting above was not an intentional response to the fires in Australia. But as with any deliberately abstract painting I do, I`m lost at the outset. When I began this all I knew was I wanted a golden warm palette. Here was my opening move. Acrylic medium with purple quickly brushed on followed by an orange soup.

Big mess on the floor as the paint flowed down and off creating a veil.

Making a donation to the International Fund for Animal Welfare was definitely helpful to my mental health.
Here is a very interesting article on 'cultural burning', an Aboriginal technique of a slow circular intentional burn around structures enabling them to withstand wildfire.

                     Trees in the Autumn Marsh watermedia on paper 19x14 inches 48x36 cm

This is my most recent painting. The wetlands of Fanno Creek become colorful after the leaves fall. The marsh shrubs are densely entwined and at a distance look almost cloudy. I did a study soon after my walk through the area a couple of years ago;

                                                                     oil on Yupo

                               Rainforest Canal watermedia on paper 19 x14 inches 48x36 cm

An improvisation from memory of the lush canal that feeds Lake Oswego.

                                                          by Eva Lundsager

                                                            by Eva Lundsager

                                                                  by Eva Lundsager


 Eva Lundsager has been a favorite since I stumbled upon her in 2012. She paints in oils too but I always think of her as a watercolorist. She loves transparency and also the landscape. The work seems in motion. Using saturated color her work is celebratory but never shallow.

                                              View from Muley Point by Thayer Carter

                                                        Gates Pass by Thayer Carter

                                                   Vermillion Cliffs by Thayer Carter


 Thayer Carter is a friend from my time in New Mexico. He`s also the grandson of Rockwell Kent.

                                                                  by Rockwell Kent


 He`s told me he doesn`t even try anymore to paint deliberately different from his grandfather, he has the same vision: a reduction of the landscape into simpler solid forms with radiant light. I think it`s the same phenomena as my father and me having similar handwriting. It fascinates me that mark making could be genetic.
 Thayer`s work is carefully composed to give his subject an unequivocally dramatic presentation.
 Nearly two years ago he was invited to spend time in the former Rockwell Kent home in Newfoundland as an artist in residence. Granddad was controversial in the community but they welcomed his progeny.



                                       

He was great, just not the servant I expected. Most parents are heroes. I wanted this badly and there he was on Christmas morning.

                                                            by David Fullarton

grateful to be a painter!



Click HERE for work for sale in my studio

HERE for prints