Landscape of Virginia

The days in this small country community are very different than living inside the boarders of Charlottesville: it's completely dark at night, and it lacks the noise of motors. And there are other ways it's different but I write about those two, those two ways really make this a nice change from city life. I like all the people I met in Charlottesville and I miss being able to see people by happenstance yet it's the peacefulness that comes from the absence of people that is so appealing living here. Its not that there is no-one, people are around but they seem to keep to themselves and not wonder around. I have to admit I don't go around off my property, at least not yet, that is something I might get into sometime later on. The property is keeping me busy. Building a path seems like an easy idea to put into play, but it's not always the case; my path from my back porch to the river down below has been a work of love but yet it's difficult and tedious....

Today is my final day of 'summer break' as it's known today. We use to call it 'Summer Vacation' but times change just as the people in these times changed too, most folks w eren't around n thosedays, but that's ok. Having a look back on my art production this summer I can easily say I didn't get as much done as I wanted to but it's also the case that I got twelve paintings done...so not all that lazy of a summer. The most fun stuff happened when I was in the middle of a pasture painting what was just over the edge, the flowers were blooming, the bees were buzzing and the sun was out...what could be more involving than that!! It felt good to be alive, it felt good to be painting, heck it just felt good to be doing what I've always wanted to do, live like Vincent Van Gogh during his outdoor painting adventures. And now I think I have had a brief taste of it. Now what? Next comes the fall and winter indoor painting season when ...

My Mountain paintings this summer have been a real change for me. I worked on them over and over but I still feel I could do another canvas of them all over again. The good thing is that I was able to spend the day in the open air among the flowers and greenery that I was working on. It's been told to me that this mountains include Walton's Mountain which is the basis for that now older TV show. It is fun to paint these mountains. They are big and they are nearby so one can easily see them while working on them. The thing is that there is so much of them. It's hard to see so much at the same time and then try to figure out how to paint there "nature" or paint the many small things in both color and form so that it looks and feels like those mountains I am seeing. My perception grows with the more I am looking deeply into those trees, seeing the "why it looks that way" and then translating that into my paint on a canvas. It may not be rock s...

The best of life can sometimes be so subtle and quite when one is a visual artist. One sees buildings, people going about their lives and places sometimes speak quietly of there character and wisdom such is this building of worship in Schuyler. Schuyler is my adopted town of choice and of strength. In it's silence it speaks to me louder than a public city bus leaving the Transit Station for a run loaded with passengers. This particular building has that kind of a voice with me, every time it is in my vision or my car somehow passes it by, it speaks with reverence of the Holiness of my adopted town. That's why I felt I needed to try and paint it. I hate painting ivy. But I needed to try it. Ivy is all pretty much the same color at whatever time of day in which it is viewed. As boring as I felt this painting would be to make, I can say with certainty it wasn't boring to me as I labored putting it's image onto canvas. Such as it was, it turned out rather well I ...

There is something to be said for examining an object at all times of the day somewhat the way Monet did with Notre Dame in Paris when he made multiple paintings of the same building only at varying times of the morning and afternoon. I feel each of his paintings is unique and stand alone as wonderful works of art. I felt this way when coming upon this scene of the Red Church among the fields of green and umber grasses. I worked and worked on it. I went back time and time again to the farmland where I got permission of the owner to stand firm and paint, doing so I came up with these three paintings of the same Church yet each one stands by itself as a finished work of art. I do not apologize for doing the same scene over and over again. I do however need to move on from it, I found it to be a unique and certainly topical subject for this area of the country. This is known among some as "The Bible Belt" and for good reasons, for many these Churches here are the cente...

The County I live in now has some wonderful features to it, one featured place is a road crossing of the main Railroad tracks it has a small house beside it. I feel this small house might have been a working feature when this soapstone mine was in bigger production. I feel this might have been a crossing guard station house for a person who would warn traffic coming across the tracks with loads of soapstone. I don't think it was a complete train-stop but it might have been. I see where there is enough cleared land to have had some sort of loading dock for the soapstone heading northward to be sculpted into building facades or other structures. But in these times all that remains is this crossing guard house which still has a rocking chair on it's porch which one can see if one looks close enough at the photograph. This small crossing is on the Rockfish River Road just east of the main north and south highway cutting through Virginia's midsection better known as Ro...

The area here is surround with some wonderfully lush greenery. In my last painting of a striking red brick Church sitting among fields of green foliage got me to put out my easel and paints. I got to work on a very beautiful morning and spent four and a half hours painting it. The work certainly paid off for me. I did hit the sky up with the movement of pigment giving it a feel of moving air but most of the painting was done on the spot where I began it. The location is just off of "Irish Highway" or what is now Rt 6 about two miles east of Rt 29. It's my third painting from this spot. I've worked looking east and west, the scenes were very full of details which I enjoy painting. I certainly became immersed in the making of all my paintings that I did on this location. I am hoping to do more pastoral paintings because I am very pleased with these landscapes but I just don't know if I will have the energy or if the temperatures will hold themselv...