Evening of Glory

 

10" x 8", acrylic on canvas board © 2023

Collection of the artist

A step outside when the sun is setting is often rewarded by a cliché. That means that you have seen them before, but sometimes it seems like the beauty gods have chosen something just for you. Now it has become piece that represents what you see at the end of the street in the "hood."

A Place Out of the Sun

11" x 14", acrylic on canvas panel, © 2023
Collection of the Artist

Returning home from central Utah, it was a hot summer's day, and to the side of the road was a respite from the heat—a hollow of sorts when the lowering sun was obscured and the blaze of the sun could still be seen.
    It was fun to paint as I recently used a new technique for me—a palette knife. I had purchased a new one in a recent workshop and had used it in another painting. In this painting, like the other one, the foliage of the trees was the issue. The knife had proven itself then; now could it do it again. It did, and the trees came to life in the afternoon sun.

Mountain Stream

11 x 14, Acrylic on canvas board, © 2023
Collection of the Artist

Exhibits are a source of motivation. Such is this painting of a stream in a nearby canyon. I finished it for an exhibit as I had been working on a more significant piece and hadn't a fresh smaller work of art to take. 
     I had taken a photograph a couple of years ago and its time had not come to be a painting. I had seen some painting with very blue water and wanted to experiment with that and the composition. It made it to the exhibit, and what will become of it now is for the future to determine.

 

Grace House, Good-bye

 

19" x 31.125", Acrylic on metal, © 2023

Private Collection

Sometimes you accept to do something that is unfamiliar—not painting, but the subject matter. When photographs are hard to come by except from memories, you buy models (truck [1948 Ford 100] and a Checker) and use a poor quality Google Map, street view—I envision a driver going as fast as possible in a small town in Idaho—it's a tad blurred as a result. The people are even a problem for they lived in a time when photographs were very expensive not to take but to develop. So, you find some and make comps for reference. 

    You start thinking that you can get it finished in a month and then 18+ months later you finish it. It's not that you don't work on it as it is center-stage in the studio; but you ponder the composition, the colors, and textures. Did I say the photograph was of poor quality. You use your memory of a by-gone era when there weren't garage doors in place and the siding was asphalt brick. What is enough detail, and what is too much? It weighs on you and you paint it several times with varying degrees of success.

    Life happens at the same time, so you edit a book or two, paint only one other painting as you feel guilty if you don't work on THE painting, but it is always in your mind—even in Paris. You don't want to be like Leonardo and not finish commissions after you have worked out all the problems.

    So, it's finished, and you say good-bye to the Grace House with Mom and Pop out to see you off as you have so many times before. Now it is not just a memory, but an object on the wall.