Came across this complex of barns somewhere in Vermont, years ago, and have painted it a few times. Love coming back to this scene, as the location at the top of a hill, with a slightly rising ridgeline beyond it, creates the right environment for that perfect late afternoon light that skims the surface of the landscape. “Long Barn” 28 x 14
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 have a great book, by the artist Hans Hoffman, titled “Color Creates Light”. Long book, but the central message he conveyed was that whether an artist’s painting approach is abstract, or representational, the important thing to convey was the “magic” of nature through color. His work is largely, if not entirely, abstract, and explosive with color. His work, and teachings, inspired many artists…many more so than me. While my familiarity and knowledge of him is not as great as others, his use of color to create a sense of light has had a powerful impact on how I use color. This recent piece is a good example of how color is used to create light…highly lit, ambient, and shadowed. “Raking Light” 16 x 20
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
Spring is coming. It may not look that way up here in cold, snowy New Hampshire, but technically, it’s coming. A few years ago, in April, I was driving some back road in Massachusetts, came around a corner, and was hit in the face by this huge blast of yellow. You see these forsythia hedges everywhere in Spring…some just small scraggly things, others immense hedges of bright yellow. On this day a few years back, it was this huge hedge that made me hit the brakes, double back, and pull over to snap a photo. Painted it once before, smaller piece, but with April just a few weeks away, felt the need to visit this place again. “April Light” 30 x 16
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.
Very much looking forward to the opening reception (I will be there virtually) for the “Color Space” show at Lily Pad Gallery West in Milwaukee. Show opens March 4. Many thanks to Emma, Kitt, Kim, Alan and Terry for all the hard work planning the show!
Click to preview available work at Lily Pad Gallery Milwaukee
