Blog

  • Beyond the Sea

    Beyond the Sea

    This mural has many unusual characters from the world of the arts.  Artists often live lives a bit out of the box.  Some of the people here are archetypal, some drawn from people in my life, but with my crowd I tried to tell a story of life, joy, music, sadness and hope.   People who have had pain and difficulty at times can see beyond the day to day to things of deeper significance.

    My fiddler looks directly at us challenging us to see more.  The woman with the cigar box guitar looks off into her own collection of thoughts.  The mime, a friend of old, has a half painted face, hiding part of his identity, as well as holds a full mask he has removed.  The man holding the woman supports her with the care he gives the bird as well.  The pregnant woman is bringing a life into the world, juggling the spheres of energy, keeping it all going.

    There is caring here, and friendship and pain, but they are one troupe together.

  • City of Ships, mural, Bath Maine

    City of Ships, mural, Bath Maine

    No history of ship building in the Americas could be complete without a major section on Bath, Maine. Ships from Bath have been known in the ports of the world for many centuries.

    This is the mural I painted in the summer of 2016 for the Maine Street Bath organization.  It is 4 x 22 feet, painted on Alupanel – 2 side aluminum panels with a plastic solid core, one surface enameled for paint.  I used 1Shot signage enamels.

    (An article in the Portland Press Herald about the mural.)

    I have a new set of 6, 5 x 7 inch, fine art greeting cards of the mural you can buy here.

    The mural is installed on a curved wall which fell in well with my design idea of having all the forms bend and twist around each other.  I tell the story of Bath’s history and the importance of ships, travel, ship building, ice cutting…this is a town with a rich maritime story from the earliest days of ships of sail through and into the 21st century of ships of steel and beyond.

    The mural references Bath Iron Works, Bath City Hall, the trolley.  For more than 50 years, before the age of electricity, ice cutting was a major industry for the Kennebec river.  People cut blocks of ice from river and adjacent lakes and ponds and shipped it south all along the eastern seaboard and as far away as the a Caribbean islands.  Kennebec ice was prized for its clean and pure color and flavor.

    No history of ship building in the Americas could be complete without a major section on Bath, Maine.  Ships from Bath have been known in the ports of the world for many centuries.

  • McKee Family, Summer Porch

    McKee Family, Summer Porch

  • Composition playground

    Composition playground

    Composition is one of those aspects of paint learning that will never be complete.  You can never sign off and say, “Well, I learned that now on to painting”.  Composition possibilities are endless and fascinating.

    An art friend and I were talking composition a bit ago, specifically joking about JPI–jolts per inch.  In truth not a laughing matter.  In many schools of composition the punch of your composition or design takes precidence over everything else in the painting.

    Any of your favorite illustrations and movie stills have that NOTAN/JPI punch and drama.  The rest of the story is subordinate to that initial kick in the teeth, mainly with your values.

    A design of lights and darks that frame the design and all fits within that.

    This is one important school of composition.

    One thing I have been experimenting with though is applying the composition concepts of Pollock, and Tobey to my figurative work.  Not designing with NOTAN punch but subordinating image elements to the overall flow of the color and rhythm.

    In this portrait I broke up all the architectural rigid forms, the lighting and even the figures.  This same composition could have been a very crunched NOTAN design of crisp dramatic lighting and dark shadows. but i purposely broke everything up with pattern and sun dapples.

  • Making technique organic to the work

    Making technique organic to the work

    [vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]One of my goals lately is to make my technique organic, to the story in the piece, not try to impose one technique or process on the entire composition, but rather to have each bit of the vision speak in its own technical voice.

    I mean if I decide to paint a scene in a very realistic sense then I impose that technique evenly over every aspect of the scene, the figures, the lighting, the perspective, the bricks and mortar and the atmosphere–to make it all work as one cohesive illusionistic whole.  This is all well and good.  However, if there is one thing that the 20th century artists taught us is that even if you are a realist, there are myriad ways to tell that real story.  For example, Picasso has some powerful paintings of his children, a mother teaching her child to walk, children on the floor drawing.  These have a visual strength, punch in a simple story that had he painted them in a late nineteen century style the paintings would have been trite, treacle.

    So different things call out to be painted differently.  And I have never, in my head, been pinned to one style.  But only recently have I been trying to bring that style choice into the workings of one canvas.  In stead of deciding the overall style language first and building within that frame, now I am trying to lefft style choice be left open and to be planned within the painting process on the brushstroke level.  Each to its own voice.

    The serious risk is off course, total and ugly disastrous chaos.  But hey, no risk is boring.  If I didn’t love risk I’d be working a paycheck job.  I may end up with all disasters but maybe somewhere in all the trying will be a small gem that shines.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”5257″ img_size=”large”][/vc_column][/vc_row]

  • Summer Entourage

    Summer Entourage

    Oil on Canvas, 52 x 52 inches, 2016, sold

    A band of artists and performers roam the dunes of Maine at Popham. I am inspired by my friends and family, who often form a tight knit band of explorers.

    Maine’s summer days at the beach can have this slow light that seems to fill everything it touches, even the air seems stuffed with sea light.  I paint dancers a lot, often in their off times, not performing but rehearsing, stretching or here my troupe is just walking a paced measured walk dance of the slow type of Maine summer day.

    It made me very happy when a young man at a gallery opening called this piece a dance painting because of how the grasses are dancing in the breeze.  I took as much care painting the grass as the people, to make the grass dance with the strolling dancers.  I often paint quiet pieces, not screaming my paint or compositions, so it is satisfying when someone really sees what I was attempting.

  • The Seelie Story

    The Seelie Story

    watercolor, 12 x 16 inches, 1990’s

    I painted this back in the ’90’s after a night beach walk on Popham. While we were walking along the beach Jen told me a story about a seelie.

  • Seed Catalogues

    Seed Catalogues

    watercolor, 17 x 30, 1998

  • Canción Para Su Madre

    Canción Para Su Madre

    oil on canvas, 39.5 x 13.5 inches, 2026

  • Tides

    Tides

    Oil on canvas, 2013

    A friend had lost a her mother.  This is a painting of an embrace of comfort, one friend to another.  The woman is wrenched inside and the man is holding her giving what comfort and support he can.

    I packed them into a tightly compressed, even cramped composition to accentuate the mood of tension.

  • Between Stone And Sky

    Between Stone And Sky

    Between Stone and Sky, oil on canvas, 17 x 50

    The islands of Maine in summer are special places.  The rocky ledges thrust out of the water from the bedrock below.  There are days when we can feel truly part of the wind, earth and sky.  With this painting I wanted to show the rhythm, the vibration of the day, the life as it infuses the woman on this island.

  • Sunrise, Bev’s Cottage, 20 years later

    Sunrise, Bev’s Cottage, 20 years later

  • Red Sun, Hauling

    Red Sun, Hauling

  • If Only

    If Only

    Portrait of Edna St Vincent Millay, oil on canvas 2017

    I painted this portrait for the Millay Poetry Festival in Rockland, Maine in 2017.  This is my vision of what she might have looked like had she not died in her 50’s.

     

  • Hallowell Woodstock 2017

    Hallowell Woodstock 2017

    this is the poster designed for the 2017 Hallowell Woodstock Revival Festival, with live music and arts and artisan fair.

  • 18 in Soho – oil painting of a city girl

    18 in Soho – oil painting of a city girl

  • Mudroom, watercolor

    Mudroom, watercolor

  • self portrait

    self portrait

    oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches