Trees

The mountains nearby are also very interesting subject matter for my palette and brush. I painted one with a storm coming down the way towards me. The mist was very pleasing but it kept getting just a little more intense as time when by. Finally I felt enough that I had to pack up and make a run for it. I did get this rather unusual painting up of a dark sky with some very tree filled mountains.

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What Has Worked;

What a Good Day For a Feast

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I enjoy the Holiday's but they seem so empty of people. The town empties out because everyone is with there family outside of this place at least this place is emptied out. I'm not feeling alone though. I had a wonderful Thanksgiving feast at my workplace with our students. It was the very best meal of the year for me. Our staff puts it together and they do an outstanding job every year. I get away with buying some freshly made rolls from a local bakery. It's not much in comparison to others efforts in making the feast as good as it is but it is enjoyed none the less. It really great to see our students all together eating, talking and enjoying some really good food. I am headed out to Earlysville to enjoy another feast today with an artist friend and his family. I will be fun. Ten of my paintings will be featured in a show called "Comic Apparition" at a restaurant in Richmond by the name of "Positive Vibe " that is run (all emplo...
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Winding Up This Summer's Artwork

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The Summer is coming to a close for me, with schools reopening I will be going back to work starting this Friday morning. Our beloved students will return the following Wednesday. I can say that it's been a very active summer for me with me finishing many painting during this break and joyfully I loved making each one. The big change has been feeling good about the work I have done both once they were done and also while they were in the 'cooker' where I was active in the making of them. This summer I focused on making 'overall looks' to the scenes which I painted partial storefronts of last summer. Those were mere studies ( or preparations ) for what I had in mind and it was a long wait during the school year '09-'10 until I could get to them this past two months of late June, July and early August. I say two months because I both took some time to see distant places and I count June and August as only half month's work time on this summer...
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Scottsville Intersection; Rt. 20 w Rt. 6

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A small work I put together in the last few days is coming from a photo taken in Scottsville, Va. I am working moreso on photos this summer indoors to see if I can convincingly operate on oils out of my front living-room. So far so good. I think I've overcome what happens to too many 'photo realist' (and I don't count myself as one I am simply using a photograph to work from) in that there final product has a very flat quality to its depth as a painting. I'm not against photo realist, by no means I like there work and the clarity that some achieve is unbeatable : not including someone such as Vermeer who's brilliance outshines us even today with his clarity of his images in oil. The thing I want to avoid in painting from a photograph is not seeing around the angle or missing an items volume as an object in space. An item with volume is one that has the intent of roundness or a 3-dimensional shape implied in its rendering, that is what visual work I wa...
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Paint What U Don't Want to Paint, Just to See If...

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Looking where I didn't want to go to paint I ended up working on a scene with the thought that "one who is a painter can make a good canvas out of anything" meaning to me that a good painter can perform well under any circumstances. So I went to Crozet, Va. and worked on a canvas that was to me a real chore. I set up behind a train station on the otherside of the tracks looking downward on a streetscene that had some buildings and a mountain scene behind it all. All this in a very small area of sight, one would unusually simply move on to some other view, but not me. I felt like seeing how well this idea that a good painter can make something look well despite the visual problems that lay within the context of the canvas. For me it was a labor of 'let's do it anyway no matter how I feel' and so it went for a few hours on a sunny day early in the week. The sun had come out and there was a short break in all the rain we've been subjected to so I cou...
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Working With Love in One's Heart

Greeting everyday with an open mind and a cheerful heart can sometimes be daunting, but today I was in a good way. Earlier this week I couldn't say that but this morning I awoke to a bright sunlight coming thru the window and a good feeling in my heart, so exercising looked like a good activity to get into, I think the air being cleaned by yesterday's rain really helped me feel good this morning too. Rain has become rare in this little corner of the world, so it's a welcome event whenever it arrives. Many of my co-workers were openly thankful for yesterday's weather event of rain. And even though we need much more than an brief shower or two, we were all thinking of how we can't take our supply of water for granted. Our school is doing well, many of the students like their jobsites and work assignments are going well for most of our students. I'm thankful for working with a couple of star students who really do their respective jobs as well as they can...
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