Candy Colors

Here is an update of the candy and marbles painting, which I recently finished. I'm pretty happy with it! You can see a larger version, showing more of the detail in this piece, here.

This painting is available for purchase here.

Our view

Here's the French landscape painting I started a couple days ago. This is my first attempt at an Impressionist landscape painting, and also at creating a landscape at such a small scale (4" x 6"). I mixed a gel medium with the acrylics to thicken the paints, creating a texture similar to oil paints. The technique was pretty fun, and resulted in a surface in which the brushstrokes were more visible than they usually are in my paintings. Working in this manner was a nice contrast from my usual smooth, photorealistic style of painting in realism. I look forward to trying a few more and seeing what happens!

New landscape underpainting

Here is the underpainting for the landscape I've just started (as inspired by the aforementioned landscape show!). This is the view to the northwest, as viewed from our veranda in France. I'm trying this painting in a small, postcard size of 4" x 6", with acrylic on 300 lb paper. So far this is just the absolute bare bones of the painting, a quick sketch to lay out the composition...

New appreciation

Last night I attended an Art After Dark event at the Tampa Art Museum. It was fun to mingle with the crowd amongst the art after hours, to the throbbing sounds of a live band. They had a really nice exhibition titled Tourism and the American Landscape, featuring the artwork of Frederic Church, Winslow Homer, and Thomas Moran. I will admit that these types of paintings, when viewed as reproductions in books or online, seem almost insufferably boring (in my contemporary opinion), so I didn't have high hopes. But viewing the works of art in person makes such a huge difference! It becomes an entirely different experience of the art when one is able to view them upclose, in person - to see the various brushstrokes, the thickness or thinness of the paint, the luminescent quality of the paint. I gained a new appreciation for these artists, and was reminded of how important it is to view works of art in person as much as possible. I was also inspired to try some landscapes of my own! I have plenty of reference material from photos I've taken abroad, so I hope to tackle them in the coming weeks.

Inside the art

Here's what my work space has looked like this week:

I've been swapping back and forth between the abstract paintings. The four middle ones are going to be sent to a gallery in Ohio, so those are the ones I'm trying to finish first. Usually I like to go back and forth between working on realism and abstract, but I've been so focused on getting these done that this week I've only been working on abstracts. It's interesting the affect it's had on me - when I close my eyes at night, it's like I can see different colors and shapes floating in and out and all around. If you've ever seen the movie What Dreams May Come, do you remember the part where Robin Williams is "inside" his wife's painting? The painting's colors are all around him. That's kind of like what it's felt for me this week, only in a much more abstract manner. Very interesting!

The Recent Cold

I've enjoyed the recent cold weather lately. Of course I'm saying that from a Floridian perspective, of having been a bit disappointed by the absurdly warm winter we'd been having. For most of December and January there's not really been any need for so much as a sweater. I like changes in seasons, since they are still quite a novelty for me (although I have no desire to experience another English winter!). So it's been really fun for the past week to be able to put on a jacket and take a brisk hour-long walk along the beach, to get the juices flowing. What's great is that when the weather gets like this in Florida, when it's overcast and chilly, the beach is practically empty. I love the sense of quiet solitude that can be had on those occasions. It's a good time for self-reflection and observation of nature, and rejuvenates the desire to jump back into those bright, colorful abstracts!

More doodles...

Here are some more doodles from my Brighton sketchbook...






I've been very busy this week, scrambling to finish 4 paintings by next Monday for an upcoming show in Ohio! I'll show pics of them when they are finished.