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!