Landscape of Virginia

It was in the seventies when I was ready to file as a Conscientious Objector that I found the German anti-war artist known as George Gross. He lived in Pre-World War Germany and showed the leftover horror of what World War One did to the German population and he reflected that in his pen and inks as well as his oils. I studied his work while I was a student at PAFA in Philly. His lessons were that the torn up German population was a bitter place to live with much debauchery and low living going on. He had the good sense to show it in his drawings. The one I selected is one of a German soldier being given a physical for entree into service, just like the one I had just gone through as a civilian in the current draft process in 1968. The drawing Mr Gross did kind of emphasized how the German Army was ready to take almost anyone even a skeleton who looks he needs a coffin rather than an Army uniform. But the title Mr. Gross gave it was one that stated that 'he qualified...

I finished what I was working on during Thanksgiving here at home just a few hours ago. It is an acrylic painting. A smaller one that took some work to complete but it is nice just the same. The subject is one that is repeated from the one I just finished. That larger one of "Mincer's" is a rather more significant painting on. I wanted to work on this painting in a plastic based paint (acrylics) just to see if I could do it. I needed to test myself in this newer medium in order to know just how does this paint hold up doing the things I usually do in oils. It handled differently yet it was better in working with varying colors on a flat plain. In varying colors it worked such that one can alter one color with many others in order to produce "bright changes" from spot to spot on the same area of the canvas. I was glad to see how this could be worked out. There were other abilities acrylics have that are unique to this medium but I won't ...

Working again, I guess I'm kind of hooked on making paintings on my time off or time to myself in my country home. That's just the way I've chosen my circumstances to turn out. It was a conscious effort to find that perfect atmosphere to paint in and a place where those creative spirits can foster new and original paintings. Since moving here I haven't looked back, with some exceptions of course but when one moves, one moves themselves and there outlook as well. I've lived my way into a new view of my art. I do however look back and paint scenes from my past: such is this new couple of paintings. My last two paintings deal with "the Corner" area of Charlottesville and the University of Virginia area where the students frequent on there time off from classes. This area is the home to 'Mincer's' and other local flavored stores, restaurants and clothing shops not to forget at store that was there until the recent past a bike shop t...

The world seems on fire without many taking the time to stand in repose'. Too much response without much reflection with knowledge on the subject that is causing the turmoil. If one pauses long enough one can see with clarity towards what would be a humane action instead of believing in destruction of 'what is' simply because it is not 'in accordance' to one's way. This drawing is of men standing in wait of what is to come. A "Waiting for Godot" sort of drawing with it's subject posed in expectation of "what is to be" instead of "what is now".

During the last four months I've been working on one specific painting. Most times I put in but two and a half hours per session, but this changed when I was getting towards the completion of this painting. I work on what my painter friends called a 'marathon' session of work. Yesterday I put in ten hours straight with only one brief break. The subject is something I have painted before but each time it comes out a little bit better. This time was no different, I knew what I was faced with and I decided to take it on. I began by doing some photos of the scene: I took photos from many different angles since setting up and painting on location was very difficult. I've tried it in the past. In order to get the optimum view I had to set up at the bottom of a lob-lolly pine tree among its branches. As one might imagine it wasn't a very pleasant atmosphere in which to paint. This time I opted for a photograph shown on my laptop. I worked and reworked the...

Having coffee the other day in Scottsville, I brought out my pen and drawing book then got to work on this inkspot. I enjoyed the time, and I was daunted by the overwhelming variety of brickwork that I needed to finish. In order to do it right I needed not to let anything out. I know that it's not quality of them but the quality of the bricks and how I sought to give each one its own character as I pen'd them in. It was a task that took some time, but I had the time on that particular day so I got to work. I guess it was an hour or perhaps and hour and thirty later on that I was done. I did hit it up a bit at home later on that week but it didn't need much more. I plan to go back again sometime to work on other vistas at the nice wooden tabletop in Blane's Books and Coffee.

Its been a long time since I posted anything: I am still alive and still working on one particular commission of Mincer's on the Corner section of Charlottesville. It's going well and its taking time but the payoff is the better quality that comes with attention to detail and quality of content I am putting into this work. Its a process. The better and longer time I put into attention to that process the better the end product of artwork. I am near completion. I also have bought a new scanner/printer/fax machine which will allow me to post pen and ink drawings once again. So all in all, I will have something to post once I get it together to finish this painting, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps the day after tomorrow...all in good time, all in all its a good time doing this one.

This painting is the last painting done in the series of work that I began two months ago in June. The painting is taken from a photograph I snapped on the downtown mall here in Central Virginia at the small college town of Charlottesville. You will run into a lot of comments about Charlottesville from me due to the fact I've spent most of the last forty years within its boundaries. I now have escaped to a smaller community. Anyway America is on parade everyday on Charlottesville's downtown bricked over Main Street which is now known as 'the downtown mall' with its stores and open air bricked over plein air eateries n bookstores plus it has its share of coffee shops. The painting I did was to give a snippet of its culture that passes over it on any given afternoon/evening. This painting is a oil painting and its large. It took all of three weeks to do it. I painted at least two n a half hours a day and at most eight hours 'n a day of work time in order ...

Here in Central Virginia we are lucky to have a few outlying areas that hold on to old community styled living and such is this homesite of Crozet. Its just west of Charlottesville and its been there for over a century. Established as a community for those men who were building a railroad through the Blue Ridge mountains it housed many a miner and there respective families. There are two paintings I did of this little town and actual more, I believe the painting logged in just before this was also of that fare city. It draws a lot of attention due to its size and charm and I guess its cultural life. There is an excellent pizza shop which is known for its award winning pies and also a little meeting place for intellectuals that sells books and has artshows. I found it an interesting little spot to paint. I did my best to involve the dilapidated railroad station that is now defunked but still standing. It took has an individual charm to it at least in being a nice structure...

Since I've painted the buildings at the intersection of the stop light in the small town of Crozet before this wasn't a completely new and daunting task. I began by photographing the location from the exact spot where I set up my easel and painted it last year. The challenge was going to fit all those buildings into a much smaller canvas and still get the detail needed to be viable work. It took time to do it right, but in the end I think I got a better product out of my extra time than if I rushed myself. You can judge this for yourself by going back to June of 2014 in my blogs and check it out. Or just take my word for it. This painting was a work with very careful paint application. I took my time and only set small goals each day to complete. I didn't rush it or do a marathon painting session to just 'get it done' rather I worked mostly two and a half hours a day. By doing this it took a little longer than I am use to but I felt a lot better at...

The best part of today's digital age for this painter is being able to work indoors with images. I now set up indoors more often. However last summer I was hauling everything outdoors in order to paint. When I painted outdoors it was nice to see people and strike up a conversation with the public while I worked in my oils onsite. But the help of being nearby my creature comforts of my home won me over this year. Now I am working from photos I have taken outside and then put up on my laptop as a screensaver which shortcuts the need for heading outdoors. Even as a smaller image I still think I am 'getting it right', but I have yet to hear from others as to whether or not they think I am doing as well or better in my 'plein air' paintings of resent times. I certainly am not a fan of working out in the heat as I have in the past but working from the seclusion of my studio does have its appeal. Temperature control, cool indoor running water (and such), being ...

Sometimes a painting doesn't fare so well in transporting it to art events and such, such was the case with this painting I did recently of the Nelson County Courthouse in Lovingston, Va. I was taking it into a show along with another rather large painting, and I laid it flat facing upwards with another painting over it and a cloth between the two. When it came time to take it out, I removed the top one and then pulled off the cloth to discover pieces of thread and 'stuff' (there just isn't another word for it) were sticking to the canvas's paint. It stopped me in my tracks only to think to myself "that painting was too wet to travel" and I guess it was. I was anxious to get my work into the summer show that I put aside all other considerations about it's availability to travel safely and be handled safely. I won't do that again. So I sandpapered it down. Then I began to paint, or rather repaint the surface over again. In doing ...

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...

Older buildings can often be unkempt however if they are given a coat of paint once in a while it can sometimes be enough to preserve them enough them as a legacy. Such was the situation with the unique structures in Lovingston. These three ( I include the one is shadow on the left in blue) were once vibrant shops and the center point of the town. The one on the left in shadow of blue was a drug store years ago but now stands unoccupied and delinquent. Sure the taxes on it are being paid but in all honesty it would take a lot of work before someone could live in it or run a gainful enterprising shop within its walls. Sure it could be done but these buildings are on there way down. I painted them because of the designs within them and how the simple look of the three floors with their wood trim work truly is 'good aesthetics' and because of that I wanted them to be remembered in an oil of mine. With that said, I present my work on 'Front Street' of Lovingsto...

Life's interest often takes us to the law and where the law is practiced. Recently there was a trial where it drew statewide interest due to the unusual manner in which the prosecution held its case. They didn't have the right of habeas corpus to carry on a conviction with yet the trail went on, and in the end the man was convicted of capital murder. There seems to have been enough evidence to convince the jury of the man's guilt. It was only the second time in Virginia criminal law cases that this has happened and it happened here in Nelson County. The Courthouse where this trial took place stands alone on top of a hill (the highest point in the city of Lovingston, Va.) The courthouse has a newer extension put onto its northside but if one sees it from one spot where I painted this canvas you can't see it. But what you do see is the old structure in all its grandeur. Such was the place from which I chose to paint this rather unremarkable yet noticeable b...

Front Street in Lovingston is a smaller almost deserted community on the main highway north and south down the middle of Central Virginia. There is no reason why these streets aught to be without many people taking a stroll or riding bicycles except there just isn't that much business going on. So its like that in Lovingston, and that leaves me plenty of undisturbed time to paint the scenes and buildings in this little town. It has some buildings that were once stores that now sit in need of repair, such is this building which was not so long ago a Drugstore. Its in a prime location right in front of the County Courthouse and other Nelson County government buildings which are active. But still with all that said, there still aren't that many people around on foot. At least that I noticed in the few hours I've spent drawing and photographing its buildings, I wish I could say different but the few signs of life I saw were all inside a metal and plastic bubble calle...

Drawing from the mind alone can be both revealing, and bring out some hidden surprises which no one would expect to see. I begin with a simple figure or object then add whatever comes to mind beside it, then onto the next mental echo transcribed into liner form. Its really just me having fun. Many of my longtime artistic admirers see these as some of my best work. I myself see them as an unwinding from the riggers of rendering a landscape or some other more stringent artform. This particular work is in the mindset of a New Yorker magazine artist who often used rubber stamps that he made himself to create and image of ink figures in a setting. This artist was Saul Steinberg He was an enjoyable influence upon me as a young art student living in Philadelphia. Not that I often saw his artwork or read the New Yorker but ever so often I would run into an exhibit of some of his art in a gallery show or a museum would be featuring his penwork, I took a great liking to his style ...

These railroads around here are unique, they send trains by in the middle of the night and whale on their lone whistles coming around the bend in the middle of the night. One stop for the trains was near here. The rail stop for Rockfish and Schuyler was about four miles away and the mail use to be put off from the trail mailcar onto an official Post Office located at the place where the train crossed the Rockfish River. The stop still exist but the train no longer makes any stop here, there is a Post Office now in our lovely town of Schuyler, Va. The hut and it is nothing larger than a 'hut' is no doubt where the mailbags use to be stored. The hut is still standing due to some committed locals who see to it that the Rockfish Post Office has a fresh coat of paint and is decorated for holidays like Halloween and other days of significance. I felt a need to paint this scene due to its ongoing visa of the tracks disappearing around the bend. I loved the perspective ang...