Blue Boat-6x8

Blue Boat 6x8

at the Plum Gallery in St. Augustine. contact me and i'll get in touch with them if you'd like this one

Did this one this week for the small works show in Fla. did it from another little plein air study I did several years ago on Geiger Key, just up from key west.

lots of little canals all over the place like this one. couldn't resist the reflections in the dead still water and that shot of blue from the boat in the dark reflection of the trees.

 

Oh yeah! big news! The Art of the Carolina's is coming up November 8-10 and promises to be the biggest ever. its the cross between some crazy art circus and art school. All the major art supply manufacturers like Windsor Newton, Grumbacher, you name it, show up. they show their latest products, have demos and give great discounts at the show. then there's the workshop component. I, along with about 40 other teachers from across the country will descend on north Raleigh holding over a hundred workshops in about three days. anything you could possibly care to learn about, in a variety of mediums and styles.

 

 i'll be teaching my adaptation of the cape cod underpainting method, knife painting, and the Secrets of Color Mixing. comraderie, fun, good deals, and instruction. whats not to love? and you can stay right in the Raleigh north Hilton where its held!

i'll be teaching three classes so email me if you think you might wanna attend. its the biggest workshop and art supply convention in the states!

New Workshop in Austin Tx
email me if you live near Austin and want to sign up its October 5-7 and the Atlanta w.s has a spot or two open. that date is October 11-13

passing the time on the the ferry heading back to Port Clyde from the recent Monhegan Island Maine trip

thanks Kathleen for the pic

Sunshine Street-8x6

another one being shipped to the small painting show at Plum Gallery in St. Augustine Florida. they will be on sale there starting the first of October.

 

contact me if you'd like to purchase.

SOLD-Streaks of Light-6x6

Streaks of Light-6x6
SOLD

 

this painting is all about getting the value relationships right. this one was done from a plein air study of a beautiful sunset in key west this past winter. i'm still amazed I get to wear shorts in January and February!

 

the plein air study was quick and I made sure I kept this one as loose as that one

 

love the way the two pieces of bright yellow and white light at the ground level of the buildings look like theyre coming around something.

 

a stroke here and there and next thing you know you see sailboats moored at the dock. well it helps that ive painted hundreds of sailboats so I just imagined what they would look like in this light key. "paint, paint, paint" gets lots of this type of raw data in the old brain banks so you can access it when you need it

Shady Lane-6x8

 Shady Lane-6x8
this little postcard painting is headed to a small works show at a St. Augustine gallery in a few days.  contact me if you'd like to purchase it

Important Workshop News! a few spots left in my Cape Cod Underpainting class at Binders in Atlanta. in this class i'll show you a surefire way to add lots of beautiful color to your paintings using my adaptation of the classic Cape Cod School of Art technique.

 

deadline is tomorrow so email me before Friday!

Vanishing View-18x24
available at Rowley Gallery Orleans Cape Cod
contact me for details

a little ditty from my show on the cape a few weeks ago. a home builder was gracious enough to let me paint from this wonderful bluff overlooking the coastline from truro to ptown. but once the houses are built i'm sure the owners wont take kindly to strangers on "their property". so it is indeed, unfortunately, a 'vanishing view'

SOLD-Good Ole Days-6x8

 Good Ole Days-6x8

 

 

12x16

SOLD

the street scene is one I sold recently on the cape.

SOLD-Falmouth Abode-8x10

just got back from the cape after a grueling 14 hour straight-thru drive. i'm still passing cars in my subconscious. saw several near misses with people changing lanes at 80 miles an hour, missing each other by just inches. I saw one woman at the Virginia/NC border barreling down the interstate in pitch blackness with no lights on. really? really?

 and folks are nervous about going in the ocean because of sharks? hmmmph. the chances of being killed by a shark are about the same as winning the lottery twice or being hit by lightening twice. the odds of having something happen to you while driving the interstate for fourteen hours. that's a different story!

whats on tap for me now that i'm back? ive got about eight paintings that need painting for a new place i'll be showing some work in St Augustine Florida. has to be done soon so I gotta get on it. i'll post some more of the cape works too now that i'm off the road for a few months

the above was a demo I did recently at my workshop in Falmouth on the cape. I showed how to draw a house in perspective, block in the shadow pattern and then apply the correct colors. the painting took about an hour and a half and the students were eager to jump on one of their own. a good sign they liked the demo!

the next day we went to the inlet but the wind was gusting and after a little sketching (some in paint, some with charcoal and pencil) we high tailed it back inside the comfy art center and did a limited stroke exercise where you have to paint an entire painting in less than 50 strokes. I had a class full of great artists and no one complained the whole time. well...not until the wind got up to about 20 knots LOL! a great workshop and I was invited back to do it again next year.

Had a great season on the Cape so I bought this

beige hat!

 

thanks for the rocket ride paul

SOLD-Teds Corner-6x8

SOLD

a little ditty from one of the old sections of Brewster on the cape. met ted whose grandfather built the cottages. Ted is in his eighties, i'm sure, so that tells you how old the older cottages have to be. loved the light key the afternoon this was painted. and the way I painted the car!

 

the show was a smashing success. fun was had by all! sold a bunch of paintings and met lots of really nice people. thanks for the party liz!

click the link for monhegan video clip below to see a clip from a cliff scene we were painting on monhegan island this past week. looks like you're going to fall off the cliff! thanks for the clip sue
click here>>>monhegan video clip

i know.... i'm slack

haven't been posting, i know. been painting up a storm tho'. just cant stop long enough to download pics off the camera and then blog.
i will soon promise!

do want to announce that all the work is done for the Rowley Gallery show i'm having. the opening party is sunday September 1st from 5-7

if youre in Orleans then please come by. there will music from my buddy tim Sweeney and his band Fringe, playing boomer rock, wine, you name it. and oh yeah! about 13 new paintings ive been working on since i arrived on the cape august 1st!

this year has been a booming year for painting sales up here and i'm grateful to all the people that allow me to do what i love. biggest shout out for that is of course my lovely wife Annette who sacrifices so much to let me leave the state several times a year to work. i couldn't do it without her, or my gallery owners, who go to great lengths to make sure they promote me to their collectors. let me tell you....planning and coordination of these events is an enormous undertaking and costs a few bucks! then there are the collectors who buy my work. without them i'd have to go to work for walmart, right?

leaving for maine tomorrow to teach a Mentoring Workshop for students who've taken one of my other workshops. it'll be an eat,sleep, dream, painting, trip. total immersion experience.

there are also a few slots for the Falmouth Massachusetts workshop coming when i get back from maine. see the right sidebar for dates. let me know if you want to attend and i'll contact the sponsor.

look out for paintings from maine in the next few days!

SOLD-Morning at Stage Harbor-6x8

SOLD

went painting yesterday with my painting bud Chris Gillis. we love the same kind of scenes and paint at the same speed (the very definition of a great painting bud!) check out his website here

Cape Cod Boathouse-16x20

a new painting headed to the upcoming show of my new work at Rowley Gallery Orleans Cape Cod. September 1st is the opening reception.

anybody who knows what a green head is knows what I'm saying when I say, "they were hungry for some mike" the day I painted this one. I still have welts from em!

$100-Rock Harbor Light in the Afternoon-6x8

$100 plus $10 s/h

to purchase with PayPal or credit card click the "buy now" button below

on the cape painting away! this is one of the places I go to get "centered" when I first arrive. after moving my whole house to another, and traveling to Massachusetts (a two day drive from NC) it was almost a week I went without painting. I could feel my painting mojo slipping away. first afternoon on the cape I ran to a familiar site and comfortable subject to ease back into the water with. Painter Carole Marine (google carole marine blog) paints apples when she needs to build confidence. I paint boats and docks.

Still Kickin'

Been away for a while. had to move really short notice and did it all myself. took right at a week. just moving the studio took me a whole day. but i'm in my new place. just minutes from the intercoastal waterway and beach.

this weekend was the blues festival in Wilmington, I got to play harmonica for the headliner at the jam. that was really cool.

you know you cant be slingin' paint every minute. I love making music and the two passions have a lot in common.

 

this week I leave for cape cod/maine and i'll be on a painting binge. keep an eye out here for all the new work from the great white north

$100-Green Monster-8x7.5

Painted on archival paper designed for oil paint mounted on Masonite panel

 

$100 plus $10 s/h

to purchase with PayPal or credit card click the "buy now" button below

 

I love doing these guys holding up their fish. the colors of the flesh (orange) against the water and sky (blues, purples) and the subtle color shifts in everything.

I painted this one on a new archival paper designed for oil paint. then I mount it to Masonite so can set it on a little table easel or frame. i'm trying out the surface to see if its something i'll like. so far I love it. its a little absorbent but the paint slides around on there like my panels if I load up the brush with paint.

 

 this is a larger painting at the smaller painting price. wont last long so click that button above. great gift for that fisherman of yours!

 

seeing these shifts in temperature is a learned skill. you take a shape and really study how, where, and more importantly why it changes within that small section. that combined with my recent desire to REALLY  simplify my figurative painting to just the huge shapes using bravura (surehanded) brushwork. see it, analyze it, mix the color, load the brush (as much as it'll hold) and try to lay down a stroke once and never touch it again. a principal I teach in my workshops.

 

speaking of that-- i'll be teaching private lessons on Cape Cod, Massachusetts starting the first week of august. if you'd like to work with me once, or twice, or even weekly, email me and lets set something up. fee is $35 first hour of each day and $25 each hour after that. weekly students get a discount.

Can U Hear Me Now-6x8

contact me about price and availability

 

second in the series

 

you just gotta love this job, right?

SOLD-Catching Anything?-6x8

 SOLD

is there anything more summer than a bunch of guys throwing lead at the poor fish?

 

i'm in the beach figure mood and itching to do a little series.

SOLD-New Life-8x7

SOLD

been feeling like painting again! can you tell?

 amazing what coming out of a funk will do  :D

this is the quisessential waterfront scene right?

$100-The Shining-6x8

$100 plus $10 s/h

to purchase with PayPal or credit card click the "buy now" button below

painting last night I had the show Reel Rivals on. its a show about fishing captains in the florida keys down around Islamorada. it made mustve got in my subconscious because today I wanted to do one from down that way! I like all the different temperature shifts in the building. I used one pile of purple/blue to paint the whole building in shadow. then I went back and made different hues the same value and added it to the wet paint. makes it very lifelike I think

A Cottage on a Hill-8x10

SOLD at Rowley Gallery in Orleans (cape cod)

 

painted this yesterday. Liz sent the image to somebody and BAM!

SOLD-Fine Pair-6x8

SOLD

a little ditty from an outing this morning. I knocked the dune down and moved the water about a quarter of the way around the compass! ya gotta do what you gotta do, right?

Don't let em see you sweat!

we've all seen or heard that right? well i'm going to go against that advice with todays post to give you a glimpse into the 'real' life of a working landscape painter. if you don't know already by reading this blog I make ALL my income from my art. that is no easy feat in this economy as i'm sure you can imagine. that said I am admitting that I've just come out of month long slump. oh my my it was miserable.

it all started a few months ago when I was painting some rather large paintings and thought everything was going well. life was good. the desire to paint was there, felt good with the level I was slinging the paint at, etc. etc. Then a black cloud blotted out the sun.

I emailed some images of the new work to a gallery who hadn't had anything new from me in quite a while. they said no, we don't like those paintings youre doing now..... send us -----(subject matter left out for obvious reasons) in a few months. then I talked to another gallery that said they weren't selling large paintings. but a few months ago when I was giving em small ones they said folks wanted larger paintings these days.

 

now I know this is going to sound ridiculous to those of you who don't do this for a living..... but I went into a tailspin. WHAT they don't want anything and its been X months, they don't want what i'm painting right now. they want x y and z. but i'm not painting that right now! don't want big....  I went big because they asked for bigger.

for weeks after this I was the perfect candidate for one of those anti-depressant commercials LOL. lost the desire to paint, didn't think about it every minute like I used to, started second guessing what to paint and how to paint it. this is the kiss of death to us creative types. we gotta paint from the heart and quit thinking about the 'business' end of the thing. easy to say and hard to put into practice when you live or die off the business end! thing is I know i'm not the only one having these bouts of doubt and fear.

I say its like walking a tightrope stories up in the air. the only way to walk the rope and get to the other side without falling is keep your eye on the rope right in front of you. the minute you look down or too far ahead on the rope, you start shaking and losing your balance.

I was cruising the web and was looking at some artists studios on their blogs, and then I went over to another painters blog who I really like and she had wrote "you gotta show up to work" and like a bolt of lightening from heaven I got that 'itch' to paint back. so I went out and .........

took a sander to some paintings that have been taunting me for the last couple of months. paintings that I kept fooling with during the slump that weren't working. OH MY! how cathartic! I gessoed over all my less than successful (read=crappy) paintings from the last year. what a tall pile that was!

 

 all of a sudden I wanted to start painting again. the "block" was gone magically!

 

so I went out this morning early (something I had quit doing) and painted Fine Pair 6x8. even blogged it!

 

I'm baaaaaack!

SOLD-Palm Shadows-6x8

SOLD

a conch house from KW. this is from small study I did just before leaving in the spring.

I found that the simpler you do the fence shadows the better they look.

 

had a wonderful three day private lesson with NMW
 from Va. she was really stoked on learning and caught on to everything I was showing her. you shoulda seen the difference three days made! she was a great painter to start with and a few tips helped even more. it was over before we knew it. time flies when youre having fun.

 

as I was standing there I thought about how blessed I am to be able to do what I love for a living. I don't make much and sure don't have much materially speaking but nobody's got me beat quality of life speaking! I always heard that if you do what you love you never work a day in your life. you can take that one to the bank

SOLD-Swansboro in the Afternoon-6x8

SOLD

dreamy scenes like this abound in the little village of Swansboro. after a long day of painting I saw this scene walking back to the truck. it was so "me" I got my second wind, threw up this panel and voila!

hope you like it