Arrington Rd Barn

     On the back roads between Shipman and Arrington (where a nice rock festival takes place) there is a group of farm buildings that stand abandoned with grasses growing among them.    This barn is one of those buildings.   It stands atop a hill with a slope of a grassy plane which makes it a dominate scene.   Its really quite becoming and the unique style of the building creates a really nice balanced image.   So I painted it after photographing it from the side of the highway.   


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What Has Worked;

Hut for a Blue Tractor and a Red Grass-Cutter

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     Many of these farm structures that I live around out here in Central Virginia near Lovingston are made from wood that has been recycled from earlier farm buildings.   I am almost certain that a lot if it may just go back to the early days of European settlers locating here in Schuyler.   One can just take a quick look and even without carbon-dating one can see that the wood is old and weathered by the elements.   It is very heavy older hardwood that these folks used in making their farm structures.   One can also see how the buildings were shaped for the needs of the farm at a time and then torn down but not discarded but reused again for another purpose..   The sizes of the buildings are small.   They may house one farm implement or two but they are not like those northern Atlantic barns that have lofts and large areas for animals, these buildings are built to suite a single purpose and generally aren'...
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Front Street Study

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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...
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A Shack on a Back Country Road in Arrington Va.

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      This country home was sitting by the side of Arrington Road and I felt it has some history within its walls.   Its a small place buy yet it had a satellite dish on it so there must have been sometime spent indoors watching the world through a TV.   I worked on giving it some life by working with the texture on the wood panels that made up its walls.  People survived by living within it.   It is humbling.
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Salute to Saul Steinberg

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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 ...
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Snow, Paint the Snow, "No"

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I can't just hop outside and paint thesedays with this weather, I enjoy it but it's been just downright cold for a good while now during the days which prevents me from going outside to paint. It's not stopping me from building some new canvases because I plan to paint indoors then later on in the coming month I'm thinking of venturing outside to an area on an old country road between Keene, and Esmont Va. to paint some old fences and wooded areas. For today though we had this snow to deal with, not much to do except to pray for the power to stay on and so far it has and I've been very grateful for that fact. Tomorrow I will finish up those two new large canvases then read some and rest, cuz soon I will be headed back to work again once they've decided that the roads are passible again. I'm hoping that won't be too long in coming because we have to make up this time we miss during the summer days when it's hot and humid. If you know any...
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