Landscape of Virginia

The best part of today's digital age for this painter is being able to work indoors with images. I now set up indoors more often. However last summer I was hauling everything outdoors in order to paint. When I painted outdoors it was nice to see people and strike up a conversation with the public while I worked in my oils onsite. But the help of being nearby my creature comforts of my home won me over this year. Now I am working from photos I have taken outside and then put up on my laptop as a screensaver which shortcuts the need for heading outdoors. Even as a smaller image I still think I am 'getting it right', but I have yet to hear from others as to whether or not they think I am doing as well or better in my 'plein air' paintings of resent times. I certainly am not a fan of working out in the heat as I have in the past but working from the seclusion of my studio does have its appeal. Temperature control, cool indoor running water (and such), being ...

Sometimes a painting doesn't fare so well in transporting it to art events and such, such was the case with this painting I did recently of the Nelson County Courthouse in Lovingston, Va. I was taking it into a show along with another rather large painting, and I laid it flat facing upwards with another painting over it and a cloth between the two. When it came time to take it out, I removed the top one and then pulled off the cloth to discover pieces of thread and 'stuff' (there just isn't another word for it) were sticking to the canvas's paint. It stopped me in my tracks only to think to myself "that painting was too wet to travel" and I guess it was. I was anxious to get my work into the summer show that I put aside all other considerations about it's availability to travel safely and be handled safely. I won't do that again. So I sandpapered it down. Then I began to paint, or rather repaint the surface over again. In doing ...

A small work I put together in the last few days is coming from a photo taken in Scottsville, Va. I am working moreso on photos this summer indoors to see if I can convincingly operate on oils out of my front living-room. So far so good. I think I've overcome what happens to too many 'photo realist' (and I don't count myself as one I am simply using a photograph to work from) in that there final product has a very flat quality to its depth as a painting. I'm not against photo realist, by no means I like there work and the clarity that some achieve is unbeatable : not including someone such as Vermeer who's brilliance outshines us even today with his clarity of his images in oil. The thing I want to avoid in painting from a photograph is not seeing around the angle or missing an items volume as an object in space. An item with volume is one that has the intent of roundness or a 3-dimensional shape implied in its rendering, that is what visual work I wa...

Older buildings can often be unkempt however if they are given a coat of paint once in a while it can sometimes be enough to preserve them enough them as a legacy. Such was the situation with the unique structures in Lovingston. These three ( I include the one is shadow on the left in blue) were once vibrant shops and the center point of the town. The one on the left in shadow of blue was a drug store years ago but now stands unoccupied and delinquent. Sure the taxes on it are being paid but in all honesty it would take a lot of work before someone could live in it or run a gainful enterprising shop within its walls. Sure it could be done but these buildings are on there way down. I painted them because of the designs within them and how the simple look of the three floors with their wood trim work truly is 'good aesthetics' and because of that I wanted them to be remembered in an oil of mine. With that said, I present my work on 'Front Street' of Lovingsto...

Life's interest often takes us to the law and where the law is practiced. Recently there was a trial where it drew statewide interest due to the unusual manner in which the prosecution held its case. They didn't have the right of habeas corpus to carry on a conviction with yet the trail went on, and in the end the man was convicted of capital murder. There seems to have been enough evidence to convince the jury of the man's guilt. It was only the second time in Virginia criminal law cases that this has happened and it happened here in Nelson County. The Courthouse where this trial took place stands alone on top of a hill (the highest point in the city of Lovingston, Va.) The courthouse has a newer extension put onto its northside but if one sees it from one spot where I painted this canvas you can't see it. But what you do see is the old structure in all its grandeur. Such was the place from which I chose to paint this rather unremarkable yet noticeable b...

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...

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 ...