Landscape of Virginia

I just finished another in my Japanese Experience paintings yesterday evening, it looks like a good painting of a Buddhist Celebration Parade. I've enjoyed paintings from my past spent in Japan when I was their with my parents during the 1950's. I certainly never thought I would be painting my childhood. When I was small and living in that foreign country, I found the people to be really nice to me and the land was very beautifully kept. People would go out into the streets to sweep the dirt just to clean up their area outside their home just because it was needed. The people had a true commitment towards the public good of the community and I noticed that even at the young age that I was during the 1950's. This painting I finished is bright and cheerful because it is a depiction of an event where the people were celebrating the beginning of a New Year, and they were hopeful. I will have a photo of it up on my site soon.

I finished the painting I've been working on all this month and some of last, it's titled "Japanese Buddhist Parade: 1954" and it's take from a photo my Father took while we lived in Kamahura Japan during my upbringing. We lived their about six years altogether and it was the greatest education is living with people of different origins than my own. I had Japanese friends and playmates, I spent sometime in Japanese homes with my playmates and was invited to dinner just by myself. I enjoyed having friends who were different than me, we did the usual kids stuff. It was during the beginning of my life so it made a big impression on me. When I discovered that only five year prior we had been at war with Japan it helped me realize that War is evil, and we can be friends with those we hate if we just open up and communicate. I know it was the Japanese who began it, but they too need to open up and commmunicate with others. Well, let me get off my soapbox and ba...

I've been working on a painting this past Holiday and it's of a Japanese scene that my father photographed. I was able to save a few of my Dad's prints in black and white before we had to throw everything away just after his death in 8-6-91. Of the photos I saved I took one and put a canvas together and worked on it. As I was working I kept a photographic journal of the paintings progress. It took a good while to do as anything worthwhile seems to take for me thesedays, but I will document it on my website at a later date. I like the results and I may try doing another painting using one of his photos later on in my time at the easel. It is a challenge to do a color reproduction of a black and white photo, it might be every harder to do one the other way around using a color photo and making a black and white canvas out of it. I don't know, I use to do monochromatic charcoal drawings and they weren't all that hard to do. Well, I'm thinking of h...