Landscape of Virginia

This truck was on the side of a barn near Rio road and JW Parkway just outside of the Charlottesville city line in the shadow of an old farm building. Charlottesville had a ruff countryside really close to the cityline and the County of Albemarle. This truck was simply abandoned on farmland owned by a family that had a farm where the extended city just grew up around it. The truck must have just broke down and been abandoned and as country people seem to do just leave their trash (big pieces at least) right in place. The eyesore of it is simple to be ignored as country people seem to do, mostly due to the cost of putting such large items into the landfill being so high. I'm sure this GMC saw much use but now 'its toast'. It sits still and rusting slowly. Just great as a subject for a still life. I used my camera though so I could work on it in the comfort of my home's frontroom.

This particular barn is an outback building to a house that is just over the City line of Charlottesville. Its nearby Pen Park only on the other side of Rio Rd. The group of older farm buildings are just sitting their in the decaying state while the land around it is being developed. My quest is to capture them in oils before they simply fall down or are plowed down by bulldoser in order to make way for more construction. As the norm has become many of Charlottesville's antiquity is coming down to make way for the newcomers moving here. Ever since Charlottesville has been named as one of the best locations in which to retire building has taken off. I would like it to remain just the way its been for the forty years I've been here but I realize that isn't what occurs in American culture or in a money growing atmosphere. The good thing is that most of the homes I've seen are environmentally smart designs, focusing on not making so much waste or leaking heat

"Crumbling Barn" was taken from the photos I took along Rio Rd just off of the J Warner Parkway. This Charlottesville location seems like its in the deep country but in reality its just over the city line of Charlottesville/Albemarle County. I enjoyed the quality of these broken buildings and I am sure to be doing more as time allows.

Some paintings that I have begun making are themes from the country around this area. I found a group of buildings with 'old country barns' as the content. One would think by looking at them that they were way out in 'nowhere land' in Middle Virginia but they aren't: this painting is of a barn located at Rio Road and the John Warner Parkway. They are just outside of Charlottesville city line. They are on a hillside just over the berm at that intersection. I selected one to see how it would work for me and I believe I will add on some more effort to including more from the photo shoot I did last week. The photo shoot was a time where I parked my car and walked across a grassy field up to them and began photographing. There were three main buildings and a truck, with some farm plowing equipment beside them. I took some photos and now I am working from home using my laptop while I paint behind an easel. I like the result and will try doing some more late

I have some happiness to report: I've photographed a few of my favorite barns that were a stuck in my memory from driving in Charlottesville since I got their in 1977. These were on the side of Rio Road just on the edge of town (in the 1970's that is cuz what is the edge of town is no more) I saw them riding around in a Region Ten van as we went out to visit Fashion Square to walk around with no money to spend. They were really some of the nicest buildings with much character and no one seemed to notice them, but I did. And after living out in the country for a while I've learned how rare and nice the really are to see as barn styles go. So I finally got it together to do a photo shoot of them. I timidly walked up to them on some field of long grass a picked spots that showed the details in the way they were built. The wood is falling off and holes are showing up in their walls so I don't think they will be standing much longer. I snapped and composed an

The students needed a Guadalajara nearby them. All the other restaurants of that version are across town or out of reach to those who would most benefit from them. The student aren't made of money or time as some tend to think. A quick affordable decent quality meal is what this local version of the Mexican styled restaurant gives to the American eatery scene in this little college town (that is growing quickly) in its selection of places to go. This one opened up a few years ago and it seems to be going well. It was an object of interest to me due to its coloring of its outside walls and its sign up over its doorway. I liked the loud but nicely painted visual impact on someone driving by it for the first time. It catches the eye in a good way. So I've painted it.

A place of noteworthiness is the "Old Virginia Chicken" and right nearby is the "Wayside Deli" both good eateries located near the U.Va. grounds. I have nothing but good things to say about both restaurants. Here is an oil done about them, I used my laptop and D40 Nikon to do this oil. It came quickly and I think effectively to produce at home.

The store here is a very popular one in the city. I love their plain bagel w butter (I'm a butter fiend) This painting is redone. I feel the same way as Edward Munch did about his landscapes, they can be redone as many times as one wishes to paint that view. The knowledge of that visual scene is only known better with each redone canvas one does of it. But the catch is one can overdo it and it will show. I like this one it has some good colors and some good crazy wobble in it as one can easily see. Many people look for an exact reproduction today, but I don't care. I don't mind my mistakes so much no a days. These kind of lend an authentic Trippelesk feel to em.

A small town nearby is Scottsville, it was the main avenue to Richmond via longboat in the days of Jefferson. The place is struggling to survive now a days with a advent of superhighways and fast moving cars. People drive right through the place and cars seldom stop into the businesses located in that small town. Its only twenty miles south of Charlottesville on Rt 20. The town possesses a literary coffee shop, an Italian restaurant and other businesses of interest to a visitor from the outter reaches of the Universe. I liked this little image I put into paint of the hodgepodge of small stores located near the city hall (the last building on the right hand side). Its really a charming town.

This building that was used as a railroad warehouse intrigued me as an interest of color, shape and form within an artistic vocabulary of paint. I saw it as a simple contrast of sky-blue, brick-red and forage green put together in the composition of the canvas. I used a heavy paint application with drawing by the brush. The result is something I think I could revisit and perhaps remake with a larger canvas. This one is merely 14" by 22". It's a small study. Its next to a railroad crossing in Shipman. I can see where it was mostly used as a holding warehouse by the farming community around this small community in days gone by.

Also in Shipman Va. there are some older homes that have collapsed due to age and weatherization of the with which they are built. There was this one which I used as a subject for this canvas that had the railroad track right next to it. I painted it with homes of bringing some life back into it. Its color was such that the only remaining colors where a bleached wood with some indigo blue and a black/brown combination. So I played with it and this was the result. I am thankful it was still standing because it seems to be on its way out.

There is a small town ten or eleven miles south of where I live that I go through on my way to Lovingston. Its a small railroad crossing town called Shipman. There is a post office and a old livery shop and some homes. There are also some old Railroad Warehouse buildings that still remain but are unused at the present time. The other buildings are kept up well yet some are falling into the ground debilitated and crumbling. These were no doubt signs of a loftier times when the railroad was depended upon to a greater extent. I chose to paint the remaining ones that have been kept in better shape. The highway is used by many people, its just that most simply pass threw rather than stop for business.

The county-side near Schuyler has a lot of history embedded in it. A gas station at the end of a road for example is over grown and out of commission as far as being a place of potential business. It does stand out from its surroundings with its red and white signage plus the still standing building with its full color. It actually looked like someone had gone to the trouble of painting it recently yet it still is uninhabited by any visible owner. Yet it stands colorful and proud alone in the woods. It as a major undertaking to paint, yet it reveled itself to be worthy of my effort with brush and palette. The color worked well using cool colors for the shadows. Under the overhang covering over the pumps and the doorway area I used warm colors (reds and oranges and greens) for the reflected light of the earth under the roof. I used sunthicken oil for the sky working it over a couple of times to get the richness of the contrast between clouds and skyblue. Overall it s

The Crozet's version of the Mudhouse caught my eye as a well balanced calm building. I liked how their iconic color choices blend so well with the brickwork of the Crozet coffeehouse. Every time I've been in the Crozet area and have seen the building I've set my mind to come back and paint it. Now, I finally got it together enough to do a canvas of it. It fits my style of work very very well, I sized it up, got into working the colors and wouldn't you know I came out with this painting of "the Crozets' Mudhouse" Its of a moderate size canvas and the drawing of the Mudhouse fit the canvas size well enough that I felt good with the first rendering of it with brown umber. I took more time in blending the colors I wanted, I was much more selective about it that I normally have been and I think I ought to continue on this way of blending the paint on a fresh paper pallet rather than working it from my loaded one. The loaded pallet is good fo

Here is an example of how I start off a painting with a drawing in burnt umber using a brush to draw it in with, then I go over it with the colors I want to use. This particular one is of a former mayor's house in a wooded area of the city not far from the University grounds and Hospital. The family of the Fife's is to whom I write about, they both (husband and wife) became Mayors of Charlottesville some time before I arrived here. There house was designed and built with the same labors' who built Monticello they just came into town and hired out their talents for private contracts to whomever would employ them. The Fife family did so and this house which still stands today inside a wooded lot on Cherry Ave and 10th Street. I lived for years in the area of it and never even knew it existed until lately due to the woods that surround it. But here you can see how I work in a brown to figure out what belongs where and then once I get it all 'sized in' as

Another older building is somewhat expected when viewing a J Trippel site of artwork. I can't help it I like painting buildings of Charlottesville. Someone at the art center I belong to said "are we going to have more building facades coming in" so although I felt slighted some, I saw the point. I do buildings a lot. So much that a book is in the works because I do so many buildings. But more about that in the future once it is done that is (the book), for now I like to put something other than just a building, I am adding characters because of that comment. I felt the person who said that had come merit to what she was saying. Buildings are places where people dwell and work and such. I felt they should be include in my canvases somehow, without taking too much away from my structures. That's why the guys on scooters. The scooter idea is a new one for Charlottesville, its in an experimental stage with two companies putting them out in public places

The home of James Monroe was built nearby that of Thomas Jefferson. Its goes by the name "Ash Lawn Highland". Its but a couple of miles away from Jefferson's Monticello. Monroe lived on this land for twenty four years (1801 until 1825 when he was forced to sell it). Today the plantation is owned by the College of William and Mary. This painting is of the main house which has an extension added on to it behind this front building. There are also a good number of smaller buildings behind it meant to support what went on inside the main house. I imagine those out buildings behind the main house were used as wine cellers, and added kitchens with perhaps quarters for small animals for fresh groceries and perhaps a stables. The grounds around front feature a good number of large trees, they were no doubt smaller at the time of Monroe's living here. The trees lining the drive up to the house (it is said) were planted by Monroe himself. Today those trees are

The second and larger painting done of Montpelier has two figures added simply to give the painting some kind of a human reference point. With the two men looking at an early version of a bicycle at the front gate, I had hoped that would add some added feeling to this painting. I was hoping to get away from this painting just being another 'historical building'. With some figures ( looking somewhat in the time frame of Jefferson) this painting might have a point of historic reference during the time of its conception, which would be in the early 1800's. James Madison's home does have features that Monticello has which is just no more than twenty miles away just down Rt 20 southward. It is said that Madison designed this home, and he did have it in mind to copy some of Jefferson's architectural designs in his own work of Montpelier. Madison's work seems to thrust the usage of columns right at the viewer when looking a this building dead on. Ma

Fans of mine asked me if I had ever painted James Madison's Montpelier, I had to say "no". I also realized that although I had lived in central Va for over forty years, I had never visited the second President's home just up the highway. So I went. I was pleasantly surprised by a really nice new visitors welcoming Center adjoining a good sized parking lot. The grounds were very spread out and scenic with panaromatic views of the Blue Ridge Mtns just to the west. I took in the house...named "Montpelier" and snapped some quick reference photos to paint from once I got home. The canvas I choose was a smaller one: its size is only 13" by 22" and is the traditional gessoed cotton duck. I worked on it for four days to get the result you see here. I didn't know before doing this one that the Constitution of the United States was actually written in the middle upper room just above the two yellow main doors. I am glad I took on th