Key West Light-6x8

$75 plus $10 s/h

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Found this one hiding while cleaning up the studio this week. its a key west plein air I did last year. its just up from Duval Street.

 

to be honest when I can see my breath in the air like I did last night, I get the itch to get down there!. ive got a big season planned down in Key West this winter, with private lessons, a trip to cuba, teaching weekly at TSKW (the islands biggest art center) and last but certainly not last, painting for my show at Gallery on Greene.

 

I also found out where ive stayed for the last several years is not available to me (she's moving off island). if you know of anyone that would like to rent a room to me from December to late April. please email me. I'd be grateful!

Far Land-6x8

NFS

 

this is a little ditty from the outskirts of Augusta. actually we went across the river and were in South Carolina. Got to see a talented painter do a demo as he was teaching class. it was fun to be on the other side of that scenario, listening and watching instead of instructing. then I went off and painted this. I'm not much on farm/mountain stuff, barns etc. and much prefer the water and coast, but this was fun to try. especially loved the way the rolling hills in the distance went blue. that's a sight I don't get too often on the islands I paint on. 

$100-Safe Harbor-6x8- 0209c

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got real loose with this one by using a big ragged-out brush. most people throw them away but I get cool effects with them! scissors can extend their life even more if you trim off the hairs that are going sideways.

I like the sense that alots going on in the scene, but if you click on the image you'll see that the "things" are just shapes of color and value.

Workshop Update
don't forget the one day demo/workshop in key west on February 28th. only three seats left! email me to sign up at rooneystudios@Hotmail.com

SOLD-Blue Glimpse-6x6

SOLD

the lousy rainy weather is gone and the streets are lighting up in the tropical sun

$110-OBX Abode-1227B-8x6

$110 plus $10 s/h

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gotta love those outer banks NC cottages in the late afternoon summer sun, right? these cottages are very unique to the area and the minute you see one you know its from OBX.

A Reprinted Post from the Past

I wrote this post several years ago but its just as true today as the day I wrote it. so i thought I'd repost it as I'm taking off for Key West in a little over a week.

and YAAAAAHH--- tomorrow will be the shortest day of the year. on the 22nd the days will start getting longer and longer! don't know about you but I needed that bit of "sunny" news!
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today i want to discuss a little talked about subject in the artistic realm, and thats your muse. a muse is commonly referred to as some impish pixie that makes you want to paint, play music, write and create (in general)

your muse is very important to the process. have you ever had a spell where you just didnt want to create anything. some use the word inspiration, as in "i had no inspiration". i know what they mean but you must remember the old adage "painting (writing or whatever) is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration" this is certainly true if what you create also feeds you and puts gas in your car. i think working everyday at your craft is what gives your muse something to work with. and travel to places that your muse loves. for me thats key west. i love key west for several reasons, a million really. its a creative town. my muse works overtime here. i want to paint. i want to play music, also to think about life in a far different way than i do in northern latitudes for some reason. the tropics have a way of reminding you to cheer in unison with people nearby when the sun goes down. when's the last time you cheered the end of a beautiful day? appreciate the little things that make life, well, life.
it reminds you to take a nap in the middle of the day, when its so hot. and without guilt because you know you'll need the energy for the nighttime (day part two) that happens after another breathlessly beautiful sunset. down here you are constantly running into poets. musicians, artists, writers, and their overactive muses. a menagerie of eclectic "characters" assemble here, in this judgement free zone and can range from the buttondown polo shirt crowd to barefoot, shaggy haired, beachbum types all attending the same event. also noticed that signs telling you not to do things are an oddity here. probably because it wouldnt do any good! its the 21st century version of the wild west pretty much.
i said all this to say. if you have a hard time getting your muse to help you out, take him/her/it to a place where there are thousands and thousands of other muses running amuck. yours is bound to get excited and start giving you words, music, paintings galore. 
but for me right now....its getting hot and its past my naptime!
then gotta get up and paint that golden hour painting ive been wanting to do for weeks. go muse!

$100-Seven Miles of Heaven-6x8

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been out on the road doing workshops the past two weeks and internet access gets a little sketchy so I just waited till I got back to post. that's my story and i'm sticking to it!

 

was in Austin Tx and Atlanta. both workshops went well. Austin is a really neat city with tons of artists and musicians. very cool places to eat and I ate my share of texmex fare while I was there!

 

then off to Binders Art store in Atlanta for a class on Cape School Underpainting. i'll have another workshop (plein air) in Atlanta again in may. 

 

Upcoming stuff: Art of the Carolinas in November, The Studios of Key West January thru March.

 

p.s.  I have some maine paintings that I can sell at a savings since I don't have any representation up there so if you'd like one email me and i'll send you pics of whats available

$100-Keys House and Bouganvillea-6x8

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these colder mornings make me think of sitting on the porch in the florida keys eating breakfast in shorts. then that makes me want to paint something from there. so you'll probably see more than a few from there, as the weeks stretch into the holidays and colder temps.

 

in sad news, my friend Gene Munn, father of my cape cod gallery owner Liz Rowley, died peacefully sunday at the age of 94. I stayed with him the last three years I spent  there and grew sooo fond of him. i'll miss you gene! you were both an inspiration, and source of encouragement to me.

SOLD-Port Clyde in Afternoon Light-6x8

Port Clyde in the Evening Light-6x8

SOLD

one evening on the Monhegan Island trip, I set up in front of where I was staying and dashed out this evening light study of the harbor in port clyde maine. you don't have long to mess around, painting-wise at this time of year when the light is fading. even more so the farther north you are. something about the angle of the sun at this time of year (going into winter). any amateur astronomers out there that can tell us why that is?

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

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-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

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

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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.

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.

$100-The Shining-6x8

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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