Work in Progress on Global Warming

Let me add an update to this...during a rainy week here in San Antonio, it became clear that the rain needed to be much more visible, and so painted on -- adding rain and diminishing the background figure in the boat.

Generally working the negative space.  I will add an image soon.

 The New York Times picked up an image from the Picayune Times (?) of three people in a gray rain in a boat that was not working.  It made me think -- there is a story to be told about the diaspora that will be occurring because of the weather change.  So I am working on an oil painting -- and I am not quite sure how it will end, but it will likely have three people in a boat in the near ground and smoke stacks pouring out smoke in the background, negative space.

It is a work in progress and I share it as such.

Blue River Breckenridge

I am pleased to have finished and framed this picture.  A darker tree in the left foreground gives it more depth.  I enjoy the people at play.





I wanted to paint the joy people were having in the river on one warm, Summit Co. evening in Breckenridge, CO.

This is a 24 x 18 oil painting from an image I took from the bridge behind the concert hall.  Actually it is from several images.  Kids were playing, dogs, people sitting in the waning sunlight.

This is very close to finished and will be for sale on Nov 5&6. 

Art Sale! Uptown Art Stroll, Nov 5&6, 2016, in San Antonio

I am pleased to have a chance to offer some of my artwork for sale for the first time at the Uptown Art Stroll in San Antonio on Nov 5&6.

Please come and enjoy the art in person...mine as well as the many other artists--it is SO much more fun that way!

The station is Number 8, and the address is 161 Lovera. 

Dollectable, 20 x 16 Oil Painting

This painting is about what we want.  We want toys we do not have.  We want the past to not be so long ago.  We want the children to still be children again and not parents themselves.  This is a faithful reproduction of a 1980s photograph of three children standing before the window full of antique toys and their associated reflections in a lace-framed window of the Antique Dolls shop in Chester, England.  I painted it originally to capture the quaint scene of 'real life dolls' admiring 'antique' dolls and toys.  I see now, 35 years later, that there may be more to it.  We long for a simple past.       

Venezuelan Platinum Pastel

This diptich pair of 24 x 18 inch pastels on paper is an example of a major theme in my art; our inhumanity to one another.  I am often moved by stories and photographs of how we mistreat one another.  I find myself wanting to restate in my art with an exclamation point the heart-rending images of the misery.

This brink-of-starvation image from Venezuela captures the trajectory of this country which has bountiful natural resources, but a flawed government.  It comes from an image by Meredith Kotow.  There was enough, there was a refrigerator even, and yet the people find themselves on the brink of calamity. 

Small Pencil Sketch from an Old Photo

Well, this was a pleasure to draw.  You can see how small it is.  Pencil sketch on paper of step-daughter M from a few years ago.  Sent along with some small gift. 

Beached Boats of Valencia -- After Sorolla

Joaquin Sorolla painted Beached Boats in 1915 at roughly the same size (100x120cm ~36"x48") that I have painted it.  This painting on a Masonite board began with an enamel wash and an underpainting in enamel.  The final painting is done in oil.

The light and shadow of the canvas sails, the vista across the ocean to the distant squalls, and the flowing impressionism of the sand and waves in the surf all drew me to recreate this powerful painting.  

Soldier and the Therapy Dog 24 x 18 Oil

This oil painting depicts the healing a therapy dog can bring to a patient.  

Eagle Pass Wilderness Area 7"x13" Pencil

I was attracted to the symmetry, depth of field and the range of values in this pencil rendering of Eagle Pass in Colorado.   

Blue Eyes -- 18x24 Charcoal of Judy Collins

Of course beauty is not always young -- though I was surprised to realize how time had gone by when I saw a more recent image of Judy Collins.  We become old.  There is so much nostalgia for me growing up with her music that I am unable to disassociate the beauty of the music and the beauty of the person.  I attempted to capture the beauty and her joy of living in this charcoal.  

The Fall of the Cowboy, Closing The Gate, 14"x18" Oil on Canvas After Remington

This is a study in oil on canvas to develop my skills with people and horses.  Two cowboys on quarter horses riding the snowy range just into a storm.  It is roughly 14 by 18, after Frederic Remington.  

Pregnant Rape Victim from Sudan, Oil on Canvas ~ 18" x 24"

This painting was to show the plight of pregnant rape victims of war.  I appropriated from the Blind Man of Toledo painting by Joaquin Soroll.  That painting sets the stage because the blind man seemed as isolated as a pregnant rape victim in the vast, almost surreal landscape.  Grimly, pregnant victims of rape in war are isolated from their own communities with an undesired, foreign child.   

Figure Study, Nude 18 x 24 Oil after Richard Schmid

This figure study is oil on canvas after an example by Richard Schmid in his book Painting the Figure. 

Charcoal and Pastel Studies -- Butcher Block Paper

Here are a couple of fairly large charcoals that I did on butcher block paper just for warming up.  Bailey the smaller of the two for a friend's birthday (her dog) and Tyler and his dog Max is a much larger piece, but was a fun practice.

Poster Art, Fiesta Girl with Therapy Dog, 24 x 20, Oil on Canvas

This painting is about joy between a young girl and her reading, therapy dog.   It is an oil on canvas that integrates a working picture of a youngster with a therapy dog, and some icons of fiesta San Antonio -- the ribbons and the wreath, the Texas Flag, and the Alamo.  Therapy dogs are always on lead -- hence the leash into the foreground.  The painting was done as a submission for a Fiesta event in 2016.