Landscape of Virginia

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.

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

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