Landscape of Virginia

I often have fun with my imaginary characters when I have some free time at home, and such it was during this snowstorm where we had eighteen inches or so to sit through. I pulled out my pens and some drawing paper and got to work. It resulted in a couple of drawings, one a basketball scene with some weird type of goings on that I don't even know what its all about. Then a second drawing of a business man passing by with some ever so strange guys around him, this to could be about anything at all. Even with drawing these figures in a lot of ways I am sort of a passerby of my own creativity on the drawing paper. I don't even know why this drawing is the way it is...it just is.

Circular objects are the unifying shape for most planetary objects, at least in our level of reality other obtuse objects are usually smaller and of the asteroid sort. Just kick'n home during this snow storm paints are what I turn to for spending my time indoors and so it was with this blizzard of 2016. I picked up on my acrylic paints ability to render a painting in short order by there fast drying and quick set ups so one doesn't have to wait long to over-paint anything. Mistakes are easily remedied with quick drying paints, you don't have to sit with your mistakes long before one can just paint over it with an opaque color. Ahh that magic eraser: opaque colors. And so with this painting there weren't a lot of mistakes per-say but there was a lot of working the paints to get a nice variation in color as the ball objects shown in light of an imaginary sun off to its right. I enjoyed painting this exercise in shape and working with light and color to crea...

Often I have after-thoughts with regard to a canvas I might have just signed and dated. Yes even though I say 'its done' I still sometimes have other thoughts about its completion that can outweigh my official stoppage. Such was the situation with "Hamner's Crossing" it just wasn't done. I sat and studied it and I decided to take the plunge and work on it somemore just because those trees needed some winter leftover leaves on them. Then when getting into it, I decided on some other changes. Lost in the fever of the moment I guess. When one begins painting, one never know where the muse will take one. It just the nature of creativity to be lost until one begins again, only to discover much more awaits than what one anticipated before the starting of the endeavor. Its now done. Framed and signed, ready for a show somewhere, with some new eyes to see it.

Sometimes as an artist one will come across a scenic place that is just calling out to be put into an oil painting. Such was this spot in Nelson County right where the railroad tracks going North and South pass through the County. It has plenty of space, and visual impact one might expect from a railroad crossing. From as far back as Edward Hopper (which isn't that far of a stretch) the railroad scenes have been a real draw for we visual artist. Rails have such great and large visual props. This crossing caught my attention with its two crossing guards and lights. It is so structured and its contrasted by the chaos of mother nature all around it. So here we have order surrounded by chaos, what a site of novelty and the promise of good subject matter for my canvases. I started by photographing the scene. I took perhaps thirty or so photos from one side of the tracks but doing it from all angles. I simply walked far down the road and then walked back towards the g...