A Challenging Week

Still Life #2, oils on canvas board, 12" x 9"

After a very challenging week at work, I headed over to Lee's studio for an afternoon painting session. He'd set up two still lives for four of us students to work on, both using challenging colors. I picked the one with the purple cloth backdrop, not only because it was closest to where I'd set up, but because these were colors I rarely see in nature, much less paint.

This painting isn't one of my best. I had a particularly hard time articulating the difference between the purple cloth in the light and in shadow--it doesn't even look like it's deep purple, does it? Dealing with the reflections in the shadows of the bowl and pitcher were equally difficult. Looking at Lee's demo piece and how he dealt with these areas was helpful, but with the best will in the world, I was too worn down and distracted. In the middle of the session, my office called on my cell phone--that broke what little concentration I'd been able to muster!

By four o'clock the light was fading fast, so this was as far as I got. I lingered a bit talking to Lee about the state of art in our current cultural climate. He brought up an interesting point: what eclipsed the impresionists at a time when they were at their peak was the modernist movement, which dealt with abstraction from nature and breaking down of all the "rules". Now that the "contemporary" artists deal with abstractions of an abstraction and there are no rules--where exactly does that get us? Other than the current ego marketing, that is, where the artist becomes his own creation to sell because he really has no other actual commodity such as "art" to market--those are merely pieces of any old junk passed off as art (because the artist says so). Is it any wonder the public is confused?

Which is why we really need to get back to having standards and actually learning to draw, paint, sculpt, or whatever by going through a process of practical training in an apprenticeship. And why Lee believes that the plein air movement is reinvigorating American art at this moment. I agree with him, or I wouldn't be there, of course. Looking at the light teaches us how to see color in all its infinitely rich possibilities, and yet make it new.

To my dismay, I came home to open my Artist magazine yesterday and read among the predictions in "The Future of Art", the writer believes the plein air movement, "which has been going gangbusters since the 1990's, will wane as a marketing genre." How about it, fellow artists, do you agree?

Summertime

Summertime, pastel on Wallis paper, 9" x 12"

There is an old farmhouse on the other side of our main road where I like to walk. This is an older and more rural neighborhood, and the white clapboard house seems iconic of everything I associate with the classic rural Maryland life: the big expanse of lawn, the front porch, the flowerbeds decorated with old carriage wheels, and a tire swing under a tree.

There is something timeless about the image of this yard with the children playing on the tire swing that evokes everyone's childhood, when summer seemed to stretch on for such a long time, and one could linger in the yard after dinner as the fireflies rose in the twilight. I didn't grow up in such a house (Cuban houses are very different in style), but if I had been born in the US, I would have loved to live in a house like this.

This painting is now framed and going to RiverView Gallery in Havre de Grace where it is priced at $300. Send me an E-mail if you are interested.

Blueridge Mountain Fog

Blueridge Mountain Fog, 11" x 14" oils on Gessobord

A rainy, gray Friday last week inspired me to paint this oil from photos taken along Skyline Drive one spring evening a couple of years ago as the fog enveloped the mountains. I'm not sure I've captured the subtle colors of the fog, or the density of the cloud vapor amid the greens of the young leaves in the dusk.

After the painting dried, it took on more of what I was looking for, a certain depth and mystery. It's now been framed and will be going to Gallery 1683 in Annapolis tomorrow, where it is priced at $450. Please stop by and see it in real life, it's unusual and beautiful.

Millions of Trilliums

Millions of Trilliums, oil on gessobord, 14" x 11" - SOLD

Last May I spent a weekend with two friends out in Virginia, at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and we hiked at a wildlife preserve known for its botanical richness. This area is home to the largest concentration of trilliums (Trillium grandiflora) known in the US, and covers this entire mountainside. There are literally millions of trilliums here. The flowers open white and gradually turn pink, but there are many natural hybrids across several species too, so the flowers vary from snowy white to deep cerise. Tucked along the paths, many other wildflowers bloom: Yellow Lady's Slipper, Showy Orchis, several types of violets, and many others... nature's perfect wild garden.

This was painted from my photos; I started last weekend and just finished it today (it's still wet). The rocks and trees invite you into the painting to "walk" among the flowers.

The painting is now framed with a nice gold plein air frame; it looks wonderful. I'm selling it for $450, at the moment it's at Gallery 1683 in Annapolis. Please stop by and see it--it looks better in real life.

The Chama River

Chama River in the Fall, watercolor, 10" x 14"
SOLD

February 29

On this odd day that comes only once every four years, I was remembering last September's painting trip to New Mexico, and dug up this watercolor done in one of my favorite places there. This stretch of the Chama River on the way to the Monastery of Christ in the Desert has some of the most amazing rock formations in fabulous colors. It's a rugged dirt road to get there, but by this time of the year, it has been re-graded to make it drivable after the summer rains. Two dear friends painted with me here; the day was perfect, neither hot nor cold, a gentle breeze stirring the cottonwood trees above as we ate our sandwiches and painted. What a wonderful way to spend one's time!

More Spring Dreams

Raquel's Garden

Today's painting is a view of my friend Raquel's garden in the spring. I was staying overnight, and when I woke up early the next morning, I looked out the window of my bedroom as the mist was lifting from the hillside with the first rays of the sun. The cool shades of bugle and other wild ground covers made a vibrant carpet for the pinks of the bleeding hearts and a lilac.

This pastel painting on Wallis paper is approximately 9" by 11," matted and framed in an antique-look gold frame (finished size is 14" x 18") and sells for $300. Drop me an E-mail if you are interested. If you can't afford the original but like the image, you can order a giclee (digital print) by clicking on Imagekind.

The Blue Gate

Today's painting is also last year's from the Santa Fe show, a 12" x 9" original oil on Gessobord. I loved the red geraniums on the window box against the blues of the woodwork of this old adobe house on Canyon Road. It's going for $125 and that includes shipping anywhere in the continental USA, more if outside. Drop me an E-mail if you are interested in buying.

My Mother's Garden

SOLD

My Mother's Garden

I was looking over my old photos and found one of my mother's garden in Falls Church. My mother lived in this little house long enough to pay off the mortgage, the last twenty-two years alone after my father passed away. A published poet and artist, to me her garden was her greatest masterpiece (after us children) among many outstanding accomplishments.

I painted her as I like to remember her: puttering in her garden at its most glorious. In May, when dozens of azaleas burst into a riot of bloom, the modest brick house became the showpiece of the neighborhood, and strangers driving by would stop to admire her handiwork. At the back, under her bedroom window were the orange-red bunches of "Gibraltar," by the entry steps the apricot-colored Exbury I had given her as a present. The reds, pinks and whites blended seamlessly with other flowers in bold combinations: orange-red poppies with purple iris along the front walk. Hers was a garden for all seasons, with bloom from early March through, at times, late roses in December.

Alas, she is gone to a better place now, and so is her garden. But it will always live on in my memory, as does our home and garden in Cuba. Today's painting is for all of us whose mothers loved gardens, and were much loved. It's a pastel on Wallis paper (see Feb 14 entry), approximately 9-1/2" x 11".

Santa Fe's Famous Pink Flamingos

SOLD

Santa Fe's Famous Pink Flamingos

Today's painting is actually last year's, an 8" x 10" oil on gessobord painted for a group show in Santa Fe. It was painted from a photo taken during a stay as Artist in Residence at the Mill Atelier Gallery a few years back. Walking around Santa Fe is always a pleasure because of the way the residents decorate their places; this facade was so amusing I just had to paint it.

I'm old enough to remember a time in the 1980's when those tacky plastic flamingos so ubiquitous in Florida became the height of fashion in D.C. Some congressman woke up one morning to find a bunch of them in the front yard of his home in Capitol Hill--a humorous prank by a rival or critic, everyone surmised...no culprit ever found...anyway, the flamingos became the height of tacky chic overnight. Imagine my surprise to see the phenomenom transposed decades later so far away!

SOLD

Dreaming of Spring

Feb. 14, 2008

Valentine's Day seems like a propitious day to start a new painting blog. This will be a place to post my paintings and random ravings. Of course, my "daily paintings" are actually weekenders. It's hard to do one painting a day when you have to work ten hours a day (sometimes more) four days a week. That still leaves me with a three-day weekend to work on art.

This is a small pastel I did this past weekend, dreaming about spring...last year my friend Linda and I went for a hike along the Potomac River in early spring, and found masses of wild blue phlox and Virginia bluebells growing along the path by the river at Carderock. It was such a lovely scene, it instantly cheered me to revisit my photos and create this painting. Anything to get over the winter blahs!

Dreaming of Spring is about 9" high by 11-1/2" wide, on Wallis paper (a sanded paper made specially for pastels), and it's at Gallery 1683 in Annapolis at the moment. Please stop by if you are interested, for more information visit the gallery's website by clicking on the link in the Links column.