Landscape of Virginia

I was just kick'n around with my brush and easel with canvas loaded aboard and I just started painting whatever came into my capricious small mind. This is a take upon an infinity loop taken to a design level with the support of a similar background design. Don't get too caught up in the color, everyone says to me "your paintings are so colorful" so I kind of know my palette is kind of "high key" but I like having something on my wall that is pleasing to look at, this wasn't always the case with me. There was the time in my youth when I wanted to lecture my audience about the horrors of being overweight and exceedingly fat. But I've put that doctrine away, and I see where the artistic medium isn't really the most effective or desirable place to being stating that idea, so I stopped doing so long ago. I do now see art as a way of not only remembering "what is their" but also rendering in a likeable lovable way so that it pleases...

Art can be redux and made anew. These are new paintings that came about from older work. I simply picked up my work on them right where I left off. One is simply a landscape I began at the beginning of this past summer, then I let it sit on my wall until it bothered me enough to pull it down and take another look at the thing. It simply screamed out for a new approach and for me to take it their, now!! Now after having worked on it for a good while I feel like its at a stopping point and I can move on to other canvases. The painting is of an open field on Rockfish River Road down near the James River in Nelson County where I now live. This scene is of a farm on land just off the highway, the land is vast and the scene was very open as well leaving plenty of room for a nice open skyline to put rendered. I enjoyed working on it. It was a warm but not yet hot summers day. I began around noon on location and finished up about two and a half hours later on. Then put...

The River view is terrific and very calming as I mentioned. It is scenic where I've chosen to place myself. It is what it is. It's new for me, yet in truth I've been here before, I just didn't know how to stay and work here. Now I feel I am ready to give it a "go". This river is just below my home and it is something else.

Forgoing art, I got into making this path to the river down below my house in the country or as some have called it "my home". Being one who's never owned his own place ever in his life this idea of cutting a path through the woods to the Rockfish River down below seemed ideal. I didn't have to ask anyone before hand nor did I have to do it on any time schedule, so I got to work on it this past summer. Only lately have I gott'n the notion that I was nearing the end of it. I can now walk to the river's edge. I simply want to put in a few more stones and be certain that those stones I've placed are secure in their spot. It's very calming to walk down to it. It has a sense of serenity which I've been looking for but seldom find in a physical spot on this earth but this river has it.

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...