Landscape of Virginia

A friend whom I don't frequent much time with anymore, not because I don't want to we just don't cross paths like we use to living in the same neighborhood and all....well anyway on with the story with this painting; He saw this scene way up in Maine (God only knows what he was living up their for, a girl I suppose..well) and he took out his camera and photographed it thinking that it reminded him of "JT's People" as they have often been called by people who knew how I use to paint these kind of overweight folks almost all the time. Well enough for the run-on sentences, I just had to get it out...this painting was the result of that photograph coming into my hands. I let it sit for over two years thinking I didn't really want to paint it. It didn't catch my interest until this guy sent word back to me that he'd like me to at least try and draw it, these were my people afterall. So I did. Then I found a way for him to get a look at it and I h...

I am slowly building up a collection of important structures in Charlottesville, afterall I lived in that city for 34 yrs without leaving it very often so I think it fits to remember it in oils. This painting is a little local market on a very busy wide avenue near but not on a downtown street. The fella in the window is a character who is their whenever the door is open and he is the owner, proprietor of the Market. Its nothing fancy mind you however he does have the essentials on hand. He runs a clean Market, not corncob pipes for sale either over or under the counter. Its been handy for me to run in with our students on a hot day and have a soda or waterbottle cold and frosty. The actual image of him in the window doesn't do him justice due to the fact that I painted him to be such a small figure, he doesn't really stand quite like that, but he does stand in the window on many a day and simply peer out watching whatever happens to be passing by. Lots of people and ...

I'm currently working on an oil but I had time to review older pen and inks last night here. My interest was piqued by one of an "Wooden Ship" that I began work on over a year ago. I wanted to add some interesting details in order to bring it to life it didn't seem done, there was something that said "yet undone" Some drawings lye about for a good amount of time and they simply down draw much interest in oneself to look at them. The reason can sometimes be that they aren't finished yet and they ought to be put back on the drawing board. I did that with this one of a 'Wooden Ship' and certainly what I did afterwards was worth it in my humble opinion. What you see is the final work, before this endpoint it lacked something one just can't put into words, but it was something important..not everything is describable in words, sometimes we just know. Hope you like it.