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Showing posts from 2011
Two Nelson roads get scenic designation This is the road I will be located on once I move down there, it will be one great road to explore on bike and later on with easel and palette...lookn forward to it.

Ed 'Big Daddy' Roth, creator of Rat Fink: A son remembers

Ed 'Big Daddy' Roth, creator of Rat Fink: A son remembers Here is one of the early influences of my artwork. I use to love seeing his model caricatures in my neighbors window. Chris Pegg certainly didn't know it but it helped my develop an idea of "My People" in my caricatures that I've done over the years. Big Daddy Roth showed my how to have fun with my pen and paper back when I was fifteen and had a vivid imagination to share with 'the world of art'....I have much to thank this guy for,,,his nerve is one of them,,,he didn't mind it if he offended the more conservative of those with his outrageous gory big tooth rats and such...I really enjoyed it. It was an age when being offensive wasn't nearly as extreme as it is today, his work was cutting edge for the time. Afterall, the Beatles had just come to New York for there first concert if that gives you any idea of how unique he was at his height.

Jazz at AHS

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Having a little extra time to do with as I choose I was able to head out to the high school I work for and take in the band directors pet project the Jazz Band Concert last night. It was excellent music done by newcomers to the scene so I truly enjoyed every one's efforts. Of course being new talent there were some ruff spots in the night's music but on the whole I have to applaud every one's ability to stand up , play and be out in the open with some new instruments and to work as a team in the performance of some big jazz band's classics. I heard Glen Miller play live with his band in the Dell in Philadelphia so I know what it sounds like to do it well, and this group did their utmost and I was very pleased. With more time with their instruments they aught to be shinning examples who can continue the enjoyment of auditory sensory thrills of our society. Here's to the AHS Jazz group and there teacher/leader Greg Thomas..job well done and I'm glad I was

Statins reduce flu death risk by half - USATODAY.com

Statins reduce flu death risk by half - USATODAY.com This medicine has certainly been a factor in my health being what it is today, better than before I started getting a yearly check up over fifteen years ago I didn't know how good doing that was going to be until I read about the benefits of the statins I take every day for my cholesterol. It's amazing and now another benefit shown here. It is a blessing. One that I never in my wildest dreams did expect to come my way. I am humbled by my previous attitudes toward the science and scientist of the medical field. I stand aside for your own consideration of these wonders of science.

Moving to Schuyler Soon

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I haven't had the time to do much lately I must confess, I've either been sick with the flue or dealing with the move to a new house. The house is the good part, south of town about thirty miles, far enough away to be remote yet close enough to still make use of the cultural benefits of the city. It's a wish I had long ago when I lived in this part of the world but I didn't have the knowledge, resources or skills to live in the country. Then I moved into the little city that Charlottesville is and have stayed for many years but now it's time to move back. And now I have the ability to be successful in the world of the Walton's hometown. I hope they welcome me. I will be on my best behavior.

Moving South

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One main thing we learn to accept the older we get is that nothing or at least most everything changes sooner or later and we either accept that change an adapt or perish. For me the change comes willingly, I am moving my homeground to a location south of where I am sitting by about thirty miles. I am doing this next month, in the middle of next month actually with the help of many good men with whom I have been able to make friends with in the last few years. The place is a small town where I once lived on it's outskirts decades ago. I am buying. For me that is groundbreaking due to the fact that it's a first for me. It's a new place being built as i write this, and it will be most likely the best place I've ever lived in where I am the one who is paying for it. I've already staked out the lighting situation and because it is on the very top of a small hill without trees beside it it is just ideal for natural lighting and thus will be ideal for me

Drawing from the Nude Body

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It's possible for hope to come into one's life at anytime at all. Sometimes it comes from love, sometimes it may come from an overwhelming joy of gratitude from an accomplishment, in any case drawing well is one of those times when hope of doing something of lasting worth comes into my life. Sometimes it happens when drawing from the model and recently it's been happening in my drawing in life modeling class at Mc Guffey. I am certainly in debt to such good and interesting models that are willing to reveal themselves for all that they are to be drawn. I think it's great that this can be done and to be done weekly truly is amazing to me.

Draw On

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I am thrilled to take part in a life drawing class at the local art center. We have nice young men and women who are willing to drop all to give we artist subjects from which to develop our art. How wonderful it is, for but a few dollars we receive our inspiration for our paintings and we improve our eye/hand coordination which improves our ability to create what we want to create. It's a joy to participate every week in this class. True I am tired once I arrive after a full day of working at my day job but I still find no matter how tired I am it does the trick for improving my artistic abilities. Happy are we who are gifted with this drawing group. Draw on!

The Tattooed Girl

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When someone is working from a model one does a number of drawings in a sitting. Hopefully one can get many works from which one can draw upon at a later time when one is faced with the canvas. This is the result of working from one nice young woman who enjoyed the tattoo covering of herself which I didn't mind in some senses and in others it seem to be a hard body to read because the drawings upon her skin where difficult to work with in the drawing of them. They got in the way of me seeing her bodies shape and form many times but such it is.

Spring of Last Year

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  The Spring breezes blew their winds as I painted this oil on Belmont Ave here in Charlottesville the other day, it's red betrays the deep red of brick in the house's walls, while details took some time to develope it turned into a quite good painting. I can say it was enjoyable to make it standing on the sidewalk as people walked by and said hello and how much they enjoyed seeing me paint. One person even asked me if I were that famous artist painting this city? I couldn't say that I was famous but I could say that I've been painting this town for a good number of years now. But I did suggest to them that it may be the case that they were confusing me with someone more in the news like Edward Thomas or Phil Geiger, but that was not for me to decide. It was fun though, I got in four hours on the first sunny day and two and a half hours on the very next day before I could call it done and sign it.

Working From The Woman's Form

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Working from the female form is always a real joy for me, it's so beautiful and interesting in the results that come from it's definition in line. This drawing is an example of how I enjoy my work while defining it. My time spent is one done mostly in silence while drawing and most times those who work from the model around me would wish me to be even more- so on the silent side of life. But here is where the work is getting more defined and fun for me to see what does the human being size, shape and even color come from and where to they go as it the shadows created by said form. I am hoping to continue my search and I will keep all of you viewers posted.

Melody of Characters of Downtown Belmont

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The place I live is full of interesting and some time desperate people from all walks of life but we are all here and we all get by somehow. These folks often enter into my canvases and become a part of my life by doing so. In this reflection in paint I blended in some of the daily activities of this part of town. A mother crossing the street with some unmanageable kids and a fella resting on a telephone poll making a call or really doing whatever your imagination has him doing. But these scenes can be found here in this part of the world, the daily flow comes and goes and so I do what I can to capture and remember it with my paints and palette on canvas.

How Working from Live Models Help

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One of the gifts of being an artist is getting to work with a live model. Sure she's without clothes but the real joy and fun is seeing the body for all that it is. In this little community that is seldom done but in the larger cities it's how I refined my craft of art. In school we worked sometimes both morning and afternoons with a nude live model. Now that I have access to a drawing class my comprehension of how to create a body from my imagination has increased in it's detail and correctness from working in just a few classes with a live nude model. I am thankful. It brings life into my work and I have a little more zest in my outlook now. Certainly people are not limited to working in art from a live model in order to be able to do good art, but it sure helps this guy a lot. I will put up one of my drawings from a couple of nights ago. A real joy to behold...God's true masterwork at hand. I do work on it with a sense of respect for the individu

New Artwork Finished But At Such a Price

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Painting takes it's toll upon those who work on it. I've been painting all weekend and gott'n quite a physical depression from the effort. It's a finished painting but it was a longtime coming and a lot of effort into getting it "right" and not settling for anything less then that state of being. The paint exist on it's own and it has it's own properties that have to be dealt with when creating with that material. If a color doesn't workout then an artist must know what's under it, what's beside it, how wet is it, do I need to rub it out and begin anew....a lot more information than you wanted to know. Well, the work got done and it's finished however Iow the work brought me I now feel that the end was successful in as much as the art is truly "good in it's endpoint" the means well that's my problem now isn't it. I will be photographing it soon, it's very drippy so I need to let it rest for a goo

After That What's Best

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It's having fun with friends on a wet Saturday afternoon on a lakeside shelter...hot dogs and mud.

Reflections

Life gets busy I was warned, to keep my priorities in order and so far so good. But I can see how that issue get complicated and convoluted over time to have one question "well what is most important for my time?" So it goes, and when one takes on a cause or an desire to do something that is well thought through and not just an impulsive thing to do well then the issue is "does it stand the test of time". Where I'm at art "has", and now Recovery "has" stood that ever so important test of where we put our presences and time. For me, I couldn't do art with any growth without being abstinent and I couldn't be abstinent without being "God Centered" and for me all that means is acting as if what I pray to matters in my day to day life...it begs the question "Would I be proud of having God hear or see me doing this or saying this or simply acting this way?" For me that is being "God Centered" on this

House with a Porch

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It was a very productive summer but as all things do this too has past us by, My final outdoor painting for the summer of 2011 is this one of a house on Belmont Ave. It is only the front porch of it but it was a noteworthy place and I featured a few figures in it in order to put some of the viewer into the canvas through identification with those people in the windows. The playfulness with which I worked the trees was enjoyable. I was able to show much of the lushness of that area's greenery in the yards of these houses. Charlottesville has no shortage of greenery in it's streets and yards, this house has a good deal of it in it's front yard and so I place a tree as a major part of this canvases composition. Being that it is the last of these outdoor painting season for myself I am thinking of putting a book together of Charlottesville's buildings. This book wouldn't so much be featuring the Rotunda and the University grounds but more of the bui

Preedy Creek Trails

After a terrific bike ride on in the northern most part of the county of Albemarle where I live, I had to get a burger fix right away. "Five Guy" right after finishing up on this trail the Preedy Trail Park where I spent over a half an hour doing their loop. It was challenging but nothing too too much of a hazard for me to navigate. One needed to look ahead and see how to gear their bike for the terrain ahead but it clearly could be managed with some lightweight hardware and some nerve. The fun was that they built in some good up/down short hops all over the place and they put them in lines of three and four hops per run. Outstanding work whomever designed it, and my hats off to those men who did the grunt work of making it fit into the landscape by working with the hilly land around them. I ran into some disappointed dog owners who felt they were put off by having to have a leash around their dog's collar but man for the sake of some great biking trails it

Dehumanization or Understanding w Respect

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Another two weeks and I will put away my easel and paints for my jobsite clipboard and such other teaching equipment because classes begin then. Before heading back to school I have had time to paint this summer and such is the result: it's titled :" Personal Dehumanization or Understanding Relationship: It's Up To You" it's an oil painting that is about three foot square and it's new. My work this summer has been an off and on affair but they do come into being occasionally this being one of those times when it clicked pretty well. I enjoy the "crispness" as one person put it to me last night when showed it to him. I think the quality of the painted surface has improved a great deal with the more time I've put into the making of my canvases. With more time comes a better understanding of what techniques work and which don't so I have better control in getting the effects I am looking for when I paint. The character with the wei

Spring Hill Pennsylvania For A Day Or Two

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There is a place in eastern Pennsylvania that holds a small town feel and has very few citizens in it's rooms/homes but does have a really nice look.. The other feature it has is a restaurant. It's a little diner which serves some of the best home brewed coffee I've tasted. The diner was in a strip mall. It's in a part of town of love where many men/women are in slim and healthy looking shape. Then there are kids who zip on by on their Razor scooters. All the time others simply sleep off their beer buzz on a hotel porch. A few of the streets had much of an affluent look to them. Most of those whom I met where friendly. This little town was where I stayed for a few nights on a recent trip. I can say it was hot, but yet I got out on my bike and rode a river trail next to the upriver part of the Schuylkill River just north west of Philadelphia and that was fun. The trail was one I thought was for biking but it turned out that it was made more for locals

Who's Looking Now

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Preparing to take a much needed vacation from the ongoing work done here in Charlottesville...I'm leaving it all behind for a little while to head up to see some friends in Berkeley Springs and then onto Philadelphia to visit someone important in my life. It should be a real joy to do all this in the next week. I'm thankful to have gott'n a good number of paintings done already in the first half of my summer break. I am hopeful about getting some more done once I return. I have some larger canvases that are ready to be painted upon and it maybe that I might feel like heading back to the comic supermarket with my brushes and paint. That's my feeling today, and I'm going to take my time driving, no need to get their five minutes faster because there is a slower truck in front of me that I've got to pass...no wwaaayyy baby!! I'll just slow it down. The painting I'm showing today was a little afterthought of whimsy due to painting houses with nothi

Making Art Is Easy

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The new day brings art into the realm of possibilities. So it has gone this summer once awake I can see how making something new and thoughtful can happen with a little bit of effort. I gather my cat and check to make sure he is ok, that he has water, dry food and that the A/C is on for him. Once that is taken care of I gather my equipment and the new fresh canvas that I put together a couple of months ago just for this quick exit purpose and I split. My car is my artbox, it has my traveling Julianne easel and paints, medium with my brushes in a box with them all. I take off. Once out, I have a preconceived idea of some possible sites along a street I decided I should concentrate on for this summer's work. In the previous days I have driven up and down it slowly looking at the various vantage points with houses of interest in view. I think of a part of the street where there might be a house or two with interesting architectural features and so that is where I park.

Human Beings and Drawing of Them

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In becoming a member of Mc Guffey I am able to access their drawing group that meets three times a week with a live model which one may draw from in order to improve one's drawing skills. Some people think all one gets out of doing such drawings is "a bunch of drawings of a nude standing around" when one is done. I have to disagree, if one becomes disciplined in drawing the human body then one can move on into the world around us. Due to the fact that to my thinking the human being is one of the most complicated forms to master drawing. To be convincing one must master many abilities in drawing and art before one can say they 'have it down', I always find the human form to be the very best challenges in art to draw and I doubt anyone actually ever masters the skill because each model brings so much new forms to light. But maybe that's just me. I plan to attend as many groups as I can to get into the skills it takes to do the human being convincingly enou

The Blood Red House on Belmont Ave

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The end result wasn't all that bad. It was a fun one to mess with, I brought out all I could to keep it interesting for both me and the viewer. I think one needs to look at the surface of those red walls closely in order to get the full enjoyment of this painting of the Blood Red House on the streets of Charlottesville.

The Blood Red House on Belmont Ave

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The summer painting season got off with a blast of painting outdoors. I set up the very day after being released from work obligations. It was a very cool breezy day when I set up my outdoor easel and got to work under the shade of a street tree. It became a desirable place and time to paint. I worked in the morning and enjoyed the weather, I felt like the day was made by God for me and me alone. It was perfect to work outdoors in and I did so. The resulting painting wasn't the best of all my efforts but it was ok. I was asked to do one by the owner of this house that actually did catch my attention due to it's wonderfully designed and built porch on the front of this corner house. It's very typical of those Civil War era homes that saw it's children and husband go off to the War from it's porches, and so I felt drawn to it in some odd but strong way. And so I set up and painted it.

Melony the Rabbit

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  It's only once in a loog while that I will find myself on a farm but today was one of those times: we visited the Hey family farm out in Stoney Point. We had a really great visit, we first of all were greeted by a really nice couple and their son. Then we got the royal tour, followed by some animal touch and feeling, which was just great. This particular rabbit is named Melony and she is Richie's delight and also of interest to one of our students as well. During our time all of us got a chance to be with this delightful creature named Melony. Sure it was balzing hot but we stood under a shade tree and we dealt with it. After our tour we had a great brownbag lunch then after those refresting moments we gathered our belongings and headed back to school for a half-day well done.
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  This was the site from my neighbor's yard this past spring, and it was a pure delight to behold. I enjoyed the mild weather and the beauty around us this time.

Time Will Arrive

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Just preparing to enter the painting season in not more than fourteen days or so. I hope the weather holds up and that it's not too humid and hot at the same time. Oh well nothing much one can do about that anyway, it sort of comes with the territory now a days.
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  A couple of friends enjoyed a hobbie of fast cars and jet fuel the other day under the springtime sun. The car blew some smoke and rushed on down the lane while we just looked on in wonder. It was a fun moment of simple pleasures under the canopy of trees at a local camping spot. A good time and that's about all I needed at the time.
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  I take a stand on the one that fell right after I got home from work ready to just relax and sit out the storm that came through town today. Little did I know I was about to hear a rather surprising sound of a treefall and be in for a workout helping to cut and carry it out of our way.
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  A tree landed on our back parking area it came from our back neighbor who never trimmed his trees back so this one fell today after a soaking heavy rain storm. Luck for me I decided to park in the street this afternoon which is actually a very odd thing for me to do. If I had parked in the back, then my little Toyota would have been crushed and flattened quite well by this huge tree that fell. Adrian cut it up. He also had his Toyota pickup truck moved just well enough out of the way so that it too was left undamaged. Tonight I am counting my Blessings as my Mom use to say that I should be doing. Tonight I am.

George Gross and My Own "Fun"

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It's been a free ride but I need to pay up. I mostly work to paint and paint to live but to love is what it's really all about. It was George Gross a WWII painter who lived in Pre-WWII Germany that coined that phrase and it's sort of stuck with me all these years..hat's off to him. He really had a lot of guts to stick it to the fascist in their own homeland, it was only through a stroke of luck or God's Will (whichever you want to believe in) that he got out of Germany just in the nick of time before they were to come after him. He then lived in the good old USA until his death. He put meaning into every painting and drawing he did and told it like it is ya know...anyway I too began working in that vein but as with most survivors we mellow with age and I certainly am not any exception to that rule: my paintings today are rather decorative when one might compare them with what I was painting in my Academy of fine arts days. So it goes but I do still enjoy a g

Early Springtime in Belmont

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  A new work done over my spring break from work, it took all of my energy to work on this one canvas due to the overwhelming amount of area that it covered in it's breath. My breath was diminished once it was done, it was too four to six hour sunny days of working on site. Then I touched it up at home. It's an oil painting about twenty inches in height by thirty eight inches in withe. It's of a street scene nearby to my home. It's a street with a good number of flowering trees on it and they were just beginning to bloom when I began this canvas. I added the flowers to the trees in as much as they were blooming then and in the days just beyond the time of it's execution. I hope you all enjoy my effort.

The Blood Red House on Belmont Ave

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A new painting of what I dubbed "the Blood Red House" is a view of a really nice looking porch on a house that caught my eye. As it turns out, it is a new purchase by the farming cultural community of disabled Americans known as Innisfree, it is a housing unit for clients who will live in town. I enjoyed a good view of it in the way that the trees still haven't bloomed with their leaves yet, so I got a really unobstructed view of it to paint it. I stood across the street as the flower pedals dropped onto my palette while I was working. The wind was stiff. The colors were grand that day and the sky was clear of clouds so the sun shown brightly down on me. I got a small amount of sun that day, but it was all worth it because of the result. I might even go back and create an even larger painting just to do this view justice.

Life with Bob

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My newest helper is Bob; he's a union guy I hired from a local homeless shelter. He works for food and shelter. I do what I can to get his psychic going in a positive direction again but it's tough. He mostly sits around and sleeps...I do what I can to keep him active but it's hard. He like giving me advice about everything I do. He's got an opinion about the way it aught to be done about everything. Oh well, maybe if I just keep giving him the word to stuff the hairballs from his ears into his throat he might learn something. I'll keep at it.

How "Roberto" became" Bob"

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A good part of me wants to be a loving, caring man who has the capacity to love another being, in this case I've decided to take on a cat into my home. This happens after loving and caring for another young female cat for five or six years, only to lose her to diabetes. It was a while before I could accept it and move on but it's happened that I found myself ready for a companion in my home once again. So I took on a trip up the the local SPCA and found a cat that's not had the benefit of a home for the last three years. He's a good boy and we get along. His name was "Roberto" but I changed it to "Bob" cause he's moved on to being the unacceptable one to being my best buddy here within my home, and so a name change was called for. Bob is resting in the window bed I fixed him, he's not be able to just look out upon "life of the outside" very much in the last three years so for now he's just feeling good being able to loo

Color Philosophy

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It's been both a warm outdoor spring and now a cold winter styled time of the year. Today I am inside filming my artwork that I did earlier during a warm spell. The work is focused on the local houses not far from where I live, they are very typical of houses in this town. I enjoyed working on the various colors and features within their design. People almost always comment upon the bright intense colors I choose to use in my paintings. That's because I enjoy them. I love intense cheerful colors on my palette and I use them whenever I can. Mostly because I think of a work of art being on someones wall for a good time, well I want that art to be attractive to whomever looks at it. For me, the serious attention given to a painting upon the wall of someones home aught to be an enjoyable experience and therefore I think of nice intense color as being not only attention getting but soothing to view in a indoor room. And so I paint from the heart of what I do so much enjo

Plans of Mice and Men Sooner Can Go Astray

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Upon our early springlike weather I popped out and put up my easel with canvas upon a local avenue that is titled :"Belmont Ave", it is here where I did a preliminary drawing before rendering it in oils this past Sunday. I have yet to photograph the oil painting but I did have this pen and ink which I will post. It's going to be a pleasure to get out once again into the elements with my equipment and in such accommodating weather it is very pleasurable to work in the outdoor air, and sun here in Charlottesville. I am hoping to get something done this spring break or the very first week in April, but we will wait and see....one never knows in this ever changing world with all the problems we have, have had, and will be having that are not even known about now. I know that the truth is always subject to revision when it comes to making plans for my future. I've learned to just put somethings aside of my own self interest for the sake of the common good of

My Concern For Japan

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I have been sincerely touched by the events in my hometown overseas of Yokohama Japan where I went to school in my first three years of educational training. Back then there were mostly dirt roads and that city was nothing more than a Navel base and a departing point of overseas cruse ships. The thing that got me was when I saw NBC nightly news showing footage of Yokohama crumbling before people running in haste to save themselves from being crushed by falling debris. It was very disconcerting for me. I may not be Japanese or have a vested interest in that country at this point but the thought hit me that some of those people who were running from the falling bricks could have easily been childhood playmates of mine. I lived not on base as most Americans did but in a Japanese town by the name of Kamahira, we lived among the people of Japan from 1950 to 1959 which at the time was rather daring. In order to play after school I soon learned that I had to make Japanese friends, an

Plans for the Spring Ahead

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It's possible that our little part of the world might be the very best of places to paint. The spring and summer can't be matched and we are getting ready to head on into it once again with the blooms coming forth soon. The very best colors come out then, the very nicest light as well comes out to shine on. I will no doubt get out into it and paint some new canvases. I truly enjoy it but I do suffer from allergies which inhibit my painting. I can take meds for it but just never seem to get around to doing so. Maybe this year will be different cause I would like to get to work this year during our spring break, so many it will hurt bad enough to do something about it. We'll see. I hope to get to work on a large painting of a scenic street nearby my home. So we will see.

Banksy Does Hollywood: New Grafitti | Newsflavor

Banksy Does Hollywood: New Grafitti | Newsflavor This fella Banksy is very daring and very talented with his brushwork and stenciling. He picks upon those things out in our landscape that deserve some comments such as the one's he's chosen in Hollywood. He's a Brit but he's got it going on. I do thank him for his dedication to his craft. He's now getting good money for his work in some of the btter galleries yet he still goes out into the public realm of roadside signs and does his work for nothing more than it deserves to be done. Quite an artist.

Drawing From Life

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Such a crazy place to work but somehow I know it's doing a lot of good, our guys are progressing into their adulthood with the guidance of our staff which I think helps and educates our students. We do a lot but what I sneak off and get into these days is drawing which is a true love of mine. I use to sneak off and smoke a pack of cigarettes with my friend Tom Beale but now it's going down to the gallery that gets me feeling in the place. Because we have hired a live model to draw from I am becoming more disciplined in my efforts with the pen. Working from life has usually been a struggle but it's getting to the point where the struggle is just what I am looking forward to doing. I am reaching a level where my hand works from my visual peering without ever looking down to see just what my hand is up to. This is when I am doing my best work I have discovered, just as my teachers always said would happen. Thankfully I have made enough work to have this unique occu

This Little Girl's Art

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Way back when, this little Jewish girl painted my portrait because she just liked me for some wonderful but unknown to me reason. Today, she teaches at Tyler College of Art and Design in a northern city not far away, and she is well from what I hear and just was awarded a prize for her art. She is an abstract painter, in her own very thoughtful way she out did over three hundred fifty other very good painters in order to win her recognition. I am tickled to have this painting by this little Jewish girl who asked me to sit against the wall of my apartment so she could paint of all things me. Congratulations go out to her and I do thank her and keep her in my thoughts in a good way.

The Hardware Store Restaurant Myth or Legend

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Back years ago there was a place on the downtown bricked over mall which was the Main drag there is a store which was a restaurant. It was quite a nice wooden structure that housed a burger and sandwich joint plus some upper balcony art galleries and such. My favorite was the chocolate shop that came in and would always make my mouth water whenever I walked in for lunch with a friend. The chocolates were right at eye level and I could never leave that place without a sample of them on my person. Having said that, a few years ago they closed up and the building was sold and turned into a clothing shop for some trendy wares of one kind or another. Now whenever the name of that restaurant comes up people wane nostalgically; one person who is the daughter of a former co-worker had a prom date in it and just the name brings up regret towards its' demise. And so I painted an oil of it because of her request for me to do so. It turned out I had some drawings of it in the

Concepts; Draw, Draw, Draw

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Another day worth living and appreciating all those who continue to make it possible for me to be free and enjoy my life in all it's expressions. Much is done in my life as an artist and I often hear artist relate to the fact that there ability could thrive as it does without a good basis in drawing. And so I have taken on drawing as all so important part of my life working in art, as well as the business end which is often overlooked; I work with my gallery in taking on work that allows them to steer me in one direction or another. Because today I can put faith in another's outside point of view and take it for what it's worth...either taking it up or not, it's still helpful to listen to it and then decide if it's doable or not. But often ideas of mine stem from my idle drawings which come from deep within. It's all good, I enjoy myself whether I'm working on someone else's ideas or some of my own. I put as much quality as I can into either