Landscape of Virginia

This painting is a winner for me and how I view my art. I often get the comments that my color range is bright, well I want it to be this way. My colors in this streetscape are simply a heightened color range from what I was looking at in Scottsville. The buildings in the painting are similiar to those I was looking at but yet I took some liberties in depicting them as a narrow bunch and certainly a lot more colorful than what I was looking at across Main Street. I do look at what I am painting but not all that much to say I was working directly off of life, it was more that I was working "from life" and changing it. I paint with enjoyment and I think that is of utmost importance if I am to continue in this endevor. This particular painting is rather on the large size being that it's 30"x 44" in it's canvas size. The reason I like it is because I had plenty of room to investigate my subject of buildings. While doing so my composition came togethe

I love living here in the countryside of Central Virginia, its divine at times like this one where I spotted butterflies swarming around my backyard. There were seventeen Monarchs and a few smaller ones flying on a bush. Truly a beautiful site to behold. I grabbed my camera and simply sat among them for a while and they seem to not mind me being their so I snapped a few photographs and then moved on. I was glad to see so many Monarchs since there was that huge die-off of them in Mexico that we all read about, they winter down their from what I've read and they seemed to have gotten caught in a deep freeze while wintering in that migration spot. Along with the butterflies where a good number of bees that were making use of the pollen provided by this thistle shrub and feeding on the magenta blooms, it was a real pleasure to witness this morning and actually for the past week or so.

A new look at the sleepy little colonial port of Scottsville on the James is what I've been interested in this summer. I've take a few different approaches to it. My first was a small painting just discovering what was out their, then I painted a store front, then a particular store and now this week I was working on the group of downtown buildings in a 'streetscape' painting. The latest one turned out to be kind of a 'flat color study' where I really was looking at the geometery of those particular buildings on the downtown strip of little old Scottsville. I actually was rather far away from my subjects when I set up my paintbox and water. I could actually hardly see them. I guess I need a little more displine in my drawing so I get it all 'in' the painting itself..oh well..live and learn and live to come back another day and try it again. I did stop at one point and walk down the street to actually see what made up those doorways under th

I took a friend to the University Hospital this morning because during his small endoscopy he had to go under for a while so I had to drive. They just don't let people behind the wheel after taking one of their 'cocktails' so I took him in this morning. It went just fine but while waiting in the Hospital lobby I took out my drawing book and found some subjects for my pen and inks. This one in particular was one I could put a lot of meaning into, a mother and daughter no doubt awaiting word from their loved one as to his fate or results. This was my thought on what I took to draw. Both lay together for a while, not very long but yet long enough for me to get them done in ink. I didn't ask them any questions nor do I think they knew what I was doing just across the hallway from them. To my knowledge they must have thought I was listening to the piano playing happening beside us but all the time I was focused on them and their absolute serenity in their pose. A

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