Recently planted several trees along the property line on the Cape, choosing Giant Green Thuja, as they grow fast and when planted close to eachother, form a solid hedge. Since then, I’ve been more aware of these trees on the Cape, as they tend to be everywhere. Many of the closely trimmed and tall hedges that surround many homes on the Cape are this same species of arborvitae. This particular hedge is in Provincetown, down a side street that leads to Cape Cod Bay. Whoever planted them left enough space so as to prevent them from blending together. While this cuts back on privacy, it does create a nice pattern as afternoon light passes between each tree. “Arborvitae” 24 x 24
Distance makes things blue. It’s got something to do with the wavelengths of color. Years ago, when my son was 5 or 6, he and I went to hike in the Monadnocks of New Hampshire…a half hour west of here. As we drove the winding Route 101 up into the hill country, he saw Pack Monadnock (our destination) in the distance, and said “I wanna hike the blue mountain!” I said that’s where we’re going. When we got there, he excitedly hiked the trail, always a few steps ahead of me. At the top, he looked around disappointedly and said “it’s not blue!” Bringing up wavelengths wasn’t going to appease, so I pointed to the landscape back towards our neck of the woods and said see how it’s blue over there? That’s where we live, and you know it’s not blue where we live, right? He said right and appeared to accept my grownup logic as an answer, but I could tell he didn’t buy it. The color of nature is a mystery at times, the way light and atmosphere distort the reality of what we think the color of a thing is. “Lavender Ridge” 18 x 18.
Put the finishing touches on this 10-foot wide canvas…heading to a contemporary Connecticut beach house with very large walls. Working large is both liberating and constraining (believe it or not)…everything has to be bigger…bigger brushes, bigger brush strokes, more paint. Those are the liberties. The constraints…once the piece is underway, it stays underway until it’s done. “Southeast” 120 x 54
I recently gave an “artist talk” for a show I am in. I prefaced it with an apology up front that while I generally enjoying talking, I find it tough to talk about myself. That’s probably a good quality. But when the audience expects you to, getting started can be tough. But in this talk, there were good questions. One in particular got me pretty chatty. “How do you choose your palette?” I was asked. My answer probably bordered on too long…so the much shortened answer is this: I treat each painting like an experiment…like a chemist, mixing different liquids to see what bubbles up. I don’t subscribe to any school-of-this or school-of-that palettes, nor do I follow any of the “color theories” or “color wheels” they tried to teach me at art school. Instead, I take advantage of chance, luck, and whichever way the wind was blowing that day. This smaller piece was done as an experiment…purely an exercise in color combinations, trying new things, different colors next to each other, etc. I appreciate and admire those who follow theories or palettes, as they clearly work for many artists. For me, those are handcuffs, and I prefer to work unshackled. “Unshackled” 14 x 14
My house is surrounded by stone walls, the result of the house being built right in the middle of an old, overgrown sheep meadow, once belonging to my (many times painted) neighbor’s farm. I read recently that property ownership, many years ago, was defined not by surveyors, but by the land you cleared of trees and stone. If you cleared 10 acres, and stacked the stones you cleared to form an enclosed tract…those 10 acres were yours. These walls became the division lines between one man’s property and his neighbor. Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” gets you thinking about the intent of these walls. In his poem he writes, “Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out…” Kind of makes you think he wasn’t a fan. But sometimes boundaries are good to have, as long as they’re mutually respected. “Boundaries” 36 x 36
There’s an old shed on the sheep meadow behind my house, a decaying outbuilding that had belonged to a farmer who’s property now includes my house. Behind that shed, right along the road that bisects my property from the farm, a small cluster of daffodils (my mother had always called them narcissus or jonquils) pops up every spring, breaking through the brush, brambles and dry grass that surround this old building. That cluster has been there for years, and each April it has served as a visual indicator that spring is here. We’re a few weeks away from the annual emergence of this blast of yellow, but I’m impatient, and decided to force their blooming early. “Narcissus” 70 x 52
Whenever there’s stuff going on in life that causes stress or anguish, we look for ways to escape. I hit one of those rough spots about 10 years ago, and found my escape through long road trips taken intentionally to get lost in the rural back roads of Western Massachusetts, in the Berkshires. While heading down an unmarked road outside of Lenox, I came across this farm. I pulled in the gravel drive and took out my camera. It was summer and the quiet was beautiful. Not a sound other than the very faint whir of a slight summer breeze. The silence, warmth and scent of dry grass was like medicine for the mind. There’s always some force pressing against our desire for peace and calm. Escaping that isn’t always easy, but is always worth the effort. “Calmness” 36 x 20.
I came across this scene quite a while ago, in a small Massachusetts town just south of me. It was Spring, and the new baby leaves of this Willow created a greenish tint obscuring the darker sky behind. This old place looked abandoned, but showed some signs of continued use, with the dirt road that winds around it looking recently traveled. “Willow” 36 x 36 (commission)
The light just before dusk deepens the color of everything, and tends to soften the textures of nature. ’’’s like theater lighting, where everything seems to be in the spotlight. Anything facing west at this time time of day benefits from this beautiful lIght “Westward” 48 x 48
Can’t remember where this scene was. I think in Vermont. I came across it years ago, somewhere, and did a pastel sketch with the intent of starting a canvas. Years went by. I came across the pastel recently and, seeing it with fresh eyes, felt it was worthy of committing to paint. While not much larger than the pastel itself, the finished piece captures the essence of the sketch, which is almost always the intention, though not always the outcome. The red trees in the sketch seemed they could use some amplification,which led to the piece’s name. “Redwood” 16 x 20
