Landscape of Virginia

The best feeling I've had in a while came when a patron and fan asked me to paint their place of business. They had seen my paintings and decided that they would like me to paint their place of business. In the past I put aside requests like these as merely not doable in the manner of the patron's wishes. In other words the painting most likely wouldn't come out the way the person who was paying for it would want it to but I put aside these ideas. So I said 'yes' in no uncertain terms. I'm not going to stop myself from doing what others would like to see anymore. Its simply a matter of being of service to my own home community, and it doesn't help that it also puts a little money in my pocket. I could be a stuffed shirt and live on my principals of just painting what I decide I aught to put on canvas or maybe I could take up the challenge and make a little money for doing so. I may be a bit of a people pleaser sometimes but it does feel goo...

This out of the city experience is very bucolic as one might expect, however every once in a while something stands out as a wonderful composition. This painting is but a small ten inch by twenty inch study for a larger work to come, it is of a Post Office on the local railroad track crossing. The road that crosses the track runs along the Rockfish River for many a mile and the track crosses the river at this point over a bridge which is under the track and out of sight of the viewer of my point of sight. I plan to make the bridge a bit more apparent on the larger painting. I suppose I will get to painting it again sometime when the winds aren't blowing so stiff.

Sometimes I retouch older paintings and take them a little further down the road of creation to another point of existence, and such was the case with this painting. It laid around the house collecting dust until I felt that I could work on it moreso than what I had done. By bringing this painting out I think I put new ideas to work on it. By the time I finished with it I felt that it was completed now. I didn't feel that way before then. This painting is an acrylic. For me that is an area I don't have much experience in and I wish to play with it until I do. I have bought some new acrylic stuff like mediums and some paints before working on this canvas, as of this ending shown here I think I am learning some good lessons by working with more supplies. I'm hoping to show it in the winter group show coming up next month and the month of December. I enjoy looking at it, its a very warm painting, and very lively too. I like that about it.

While living in Charlottesville one could sometimes spot a wonderfully beautiful view while simply walking. This drawing was arrived at this way. It is a house upon a hillside on the southern side of the city. The house isn't all that noticable from the main street (Monticello Ave near Mead Ave) but if you see how slanted the hill its on is you can get the idea of whats' so special about it. The building defies gravity and sits there on that hillside with a really great view of Monticello Mountain and Brown's Mtn. It was worth remembering with this drawing. Since I no longer live in the city of Charlottesville I am glad to have my drawings as a way of remembering my past living in that city. I had my moments and the city was a place like no other. It has its charms.

Hey Now Hey Now!! When one gets the chance to draw its the duty, the moral obligation of the artist to do it. And so with autumn breezes blowing I got up off my duff and took off with my drawing book to head out. I found myself doing double duty, I took the recycling to the center and my drawing notebooks along for the ride. No not to draw the dump but to travel a little bit further down the road to Lovingston. Its got a lot of promise. If someone has the money to invest in some dying wooden turn of the nineteen hundred's buildings that is: I see them as museum pieces to what was not but sixteen decades ago or so. They do have style and they are sort of sculpted in a manner no longer done in buildings of this millennium. I set up on Front Street in Lovingston and got right to work. About a better day one wouldn't be able to get if one tried and so the drawing went quickly. About an hour to an hour and a half later there it was, done to the point where I coul...

The north/south line travels passed me just a short distance away and it has had a rather unique little crossing gate house just where the road goes over it. The train seldom passes by yet this crossing captured my attention mostly because of its so tiny. There is enough room for one lineman to sit and wait to stop traffic. Now there is an electronically controlled signal but I think it maybe that the small house use to put up a man who would stop traffic once he heard the sound of the train whisel coming close by. But it is something one just doesn't see much of anymore what with the days of computer automation happening all around us, so I thought I would draw it.

One of the nicer buildings left in the small town nearby where I now live is Lovingston,Va. It is a town with a history and I am sure the downtown that is leftover from earlier times must have stories of life within it. I just don't know what those stories consist of right now but I intend to learn about them. One of the largest buildings in the downtown area is this one with a great porch on it and that it is three floors high does say something about its former importance to the life of this city. Now it stands in disrepair though. It made for a nice study and the part of the drawing that I am showing here is only a section of the overall rendering of it in my notebook. The part of the city where this building stands is more or less uninhabited by the towns people of Lovingston. All the two hours it took to do this drawing I saw but one man passing by on the sidewalk and he was pleasant enough but I was just about to ask him "well what are you doing here?"...