Charlottesville : The Cityscape of Change

We don't get a lot of rain here during the typical summer but today I can see rain off to the west that should reach here by this afternoon if it doesn't dry up. We have some really dry air overhead. I'll be happy to see the rain when it comes even if I am planning to put up an artshow of my own this evening.
I will hang a group of my watercolors tonight at a local produce shop just around the corner from me. It will hang for the month of August. I've gott'n everything together, I've written the "artist statement", I've written the description for each piece that shows the title, name, size and so on. I've also brought all the hooks and nails that I will need and well I'm ready to go.
You wouldn't think a vegetable shop would be a good place in which to hang art, but this place is ideal for letting the local public see art. It will be hung right at the end of the checkout line and while people are waiting to have thei…

It's been hot, but that's a regular thing during this time of year and I'm ok with it even if I am more of a cold weather lover I still enjoy getting out into the heat of the sun today. I've been able to watch some good films lately on this summer break, one of the best being "The World is Not Never Enough" a Flemming spy story featuring James Bond of course and I loved it. What unbelievable fun it was to watch the incredible events that unrolled one after another in that film. In between paintings, films are a good diversion while I wait for the paint to dry. I've been painting a lot of smaller canvases mainly because I don't have to spend as much time on them before I get to an end point. It's quicker to see something come from my efforts with a small canvas. It's ok to not know what your doing when one starts one because you won't mess up that much if it's a flop. And afterall, I think my Dad was right when he said to…

Life gets busy and the busy get lively, I've been painting a whole lot since I've returned from a northern city of my past. (It's Philadelphia in case you didn't know, I went to Art School their) I've been able to do six 20 cm paintings on masonite and then one small 10" by 20" painting since my return. Most of them have to do with old model cars and/or traveling on the highway. I found that people who knew me thirty-five years ago also enjoyed the way I painted cars and such, so I decided to get right back to it when I got back home. I have enjoyed returning to that subject to paint. I always like autos and trucks and now I can make up my own versions of them when I create a painting and it's fun. They will be up on my site in a week or so. It will take a while due to the fact that I am headed out to a NA campout, the very first campout type of event that ever happened here in Virginia, and it's taking place at Natural Chimney'…

I was able to get up to Philadelphia this past week, on Thursday I drove up from DC and spent the day looking at the alumni show at the Hamilton Building and also the Bank of America's permanent collection which cost a little bit. The alumni show was free and it also showed more class than the Bank of America's collection did in my opinion. They wouldn't let me photograph it but what my eyes saw was astonishing. There was excellent control of paint shown by one painting in particular. "Smoke Dreams" was a painting about opium smokers, and it wasn't a dark foreboding painting as one might picture, it was more of a light colored and also lighthearted view of smoking such a drug. The background has a couple of Japanese people engaged in a sexual maneuver but it's painted in a newer, more western manner and it wasn't at all distasteful nor did it make me feel uncomfortable while looking at it. In the foreground stands a woman who is certainly u…

I took a walk. I brought along my camera on that walk today. Just taking a meandering stroll around the downtown area and I really enjoyed it. I was able to see just how much this place has changed for the better. To me at least, this town has put up some really nice buildings with good features on them. Some of the better ones have been put to good usage by patrons of the arts. There are many more craft and actual art shops and galleries in this downtown area now that are open for business. The good thing is that they seem to be surviving, they continue to be open for business month after month. Twenty years ago, this town just didn't have much in the way of art shops, or galleries. We artists had to show work in bakeries or restaurants if we wanted to have our work seen, now one can see one or two gallery spaces per block on the downtown mall. Yes, there are places to show one's work now. I even went to a workshop held at the Omni Hotel where we all talked ab…