Landscape with Farm and Hills

acrylic on stretched canvas

16 x 20"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Today I painted something in my own neck of the woods. As of late, I've been fighting the winter snows and turning my palette to warmer images and places I would like to be at this time of year. So, I have been busy painting summer seascapes, harbors, sandy beaches, and more. But then, suddenly as I was rummaging through some sketches and photos, I recognize the places as being just down the road from here. I thought to myself, this time I'm not taking the warm and easy way out on a composition. I'm going to see what I can do with what's right under my nose. Damn the snow, the cold, I'm a painter, and I can paint cold and barren just as well as warm and sunny. Not that the neighbors farm house is barren, but in contrast to the beaches of Maui, well,.. you know. So, now I'm back to painting whatever gets in front of me. Be it, warm, cold, animal, vegetable or mineral. That's for now. Who knows where I go from there. For me, the process of painting comes down to more of the fact that I paint, to paint. I don't want to make a picture, I want to make a painting. That to me is foremost in my intent. To paint, to make a painting. Aside from marketing factors, the subject is the vehicle for the painting. It forms the bones for the paint to build up muscle upon.

Today, a landscape, tomorrow, .. a bottle of wine. It doesn't matter, its a painting.

I'm rummaging through sketches I have done in all sorts of places. Coffee shops, on a rock near the lake, in the car, in my studio, on location in some point of interest, wherever. These I will convert into works, .. paintings, impressionist painting, expressionist paintings, abstracts, seascapes, landscapes, animals, and colorful acrylic compositions. Its what I do. I'm not a method painter. I didn't go to the school of "lets learn how to make a painting." I went to art school. That's not the same. Nobody ever told me how to make a painting. They opened my eyes to learn how to see, to absorb life, to purge that onto the canvas with honesty. I still remember some of the students in art class that were frustrated because the instructors were not teaching them how to make mountains, or trees, or horses. They instead were talking color, movement, energy, line, impression, experimentation. This really separated the art students from the illustration segment. Some left the class and went on to become the Norman Rockwell of their time, and others just gave up. But the ones who wanted to be artists, kept on with the pursuit of just working at the canvas, for the sole reason of the creation of something new, something unseen before, and revealing. I'm really glad and thankful, no one taught me "how" to paint.

Stylish Home

I have bee included in the Stylish Home Etsy finds page, under the category of painting this week. Please feel free to take a look at the painting that was chosen and let me know how you like it.

www.stylishhome.com/Community/StylishHome-Current/Paintings-StylishHomes-Week...

I especially like the spontaneity of this one and the way the warm light is bouncing off of the structures.

Its not easy being simple.

____________

Island Light

8x10

acrylic on canvas

As of late, I've been experimenting painting on heavy weight paper. I like the unpretentious feel it has, and the fact that I can store them more readily and easily than stretched canvases. I hope to do more on this surface and see where it takes me.

________________

Seacoast landscape

11 x 15

acrylic on canvas

available on: http://www.etsy.com/listing/66937183/expressive-seacoast-painting-with-boat

As of late I have been experimenting with painting on heavyweight paper. It has a different feel to it, and I am beginning to like it. I also like panels and canvas boards, when I'm not using stretched canvas. The thing that I do like about paper, is the storage space that it offers me to file them away. Eventually, stretched canvas can run you out of the studio, if you try storing too much of it.

With the flatter surfaced panels and papers, its not a problem storing large numbers of works in a limited amount of space.

For now, though, I move around from surface to surface as I need to. Seems like I just enjoy the different feels each one has.

Seaside shack in a fishing cove

11x14"

acrylic on canvas

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Somewhere in the mid coast region of Maine is a small cove with this little shack that sells crafts and paintings.

A pleasant salty little place that deserved to be painted.