A New Season

A Daily Painting.
I was in the art supply store yesterday and bought a couple of small watercolor blocks. I`m going to try to resume the daily painting practice even as I`m doing large oil paintings. I have a big close up of a creek bank in process and it looks promising.


watermedia on paper 7"x5"

Autumn Tree Study

A Daily painting.
I walk by this clump of maple trunks often and think I may do a big painting of them.


Oil on panel 6"x6"

Bandelier

The canyon of the Frijoles Creek in Bandelier National Monument New Mexico. This was the subject I chose to demonstrate the mixed media technique I use to my visiting friend. It was fitting, as she is the one who introduced me to the park 36 years ago.


Mixed watermedia on Yupo 15.5"x11.5"

Lacamas Creek

This is a painting that may never be finished. I began it at least four years ago and I haul it out every so often for another round. Maybe next time it will fall into place. My first friend in New Mexico is visiting and she came here to paint. She thought the mixed media technique I use could expand her practice beyond a lovely but time consuming way of working. So for three days now, she`s on one side of the studio and I`m on the other. I`ve been working on this again while she`s here.
In 1976, having dropped out of college and art school, I moved to Santa Fe to begin my life as an artist. I was 22 and knew no one in the city. By tremendous good fortune, the apartment I rented was a duplex. On the other side lived Kathy who would become one of my closest friends. She was a native and knew everything cool and beautiful about my new home, and gave me a thorough and gentle education about the unique culture of that state. Had she not lived next door, I`m certain my life would have taken a much different trajectory. Now she`s painting a few feet away from me on a rainy day in the completely different world of the Pacific Northwest.


oil on canvas 16"x12"

Sauvie Island Study

Every local landscape painter I know of goes out to this island to paint, especially in the summer. For good reason, it can make you love your life. It has a unique spaciousness that feels timeless. I`ve painted here with friends long into the warm evening, happy to be making my watercolors, with people I care about, surrounded by beauty.



Oil on canvas paper 12"x9"

Bryant Woods December

In the rain forests here, some fall color can linger into the new year.



Oil on canvas 30"x24"

Poplars in the Gloaming 2

After a visit to beautiful Menucha, I painted a small study of these poplars. Now a larger version. I`ve always loved tonalist painting with its subtlety and mystery. When I was a young man, I would smoke pot and walk into the forest at dusk. Gradually, space, color and shadow would collapse into darkness. Those early experiences were crucial in my becoming a painter. I learned to see.


oil on canvas 20"x16"