New Sketchbook

 Made a new Montanapolitan Croptic sketchbook. 

Here are some of my faves from the old one, done January - July 2022.

 Back Porch in the Rain

A little sketch in my Montanapolitancroptic sketchook, painted across the gutter, taking advantage of its hidden stitching.

Watercolor, ink

4" x 9"

Black and White show

These three drawings have been accepted to Black & White, a juried exhibition hosted by Workshop 13 in Ware, MA.

ArtWorks Gallery

69 Main Street

Ware, MA.

In Person Exhibition from August 6th to 28th

Saturdays/Sundays 1 to 5 pm

Opening Reception Saturday August 3 3:00-5:00

Online Exhibition available Starting August 9th. Visit www.workshop13.org/

Where Ignorant Armies Clash by Night

This is a larger version of a sketch I did shortly after January 6, 2021. This image, from the last line of "Dover Beach", a poem by Matthew Arnold, has stuck with me ever since I was a child and my father quoted it as we drove by the oil refineries on the New Jersey Turnpike.

River Valley 

An imaginary person in an imaginary scene; make of it what you will. Perhaps she represents remembered love and peace, far from the battle.

Heath Street Stop 

I used to live on the same MBTA line as the Boston VA Hospital, where veterans would travel by streetcar to get health care. Long after the battles are over and forgotten, the people that fought them still need help and support. A sacred obligation being flouted today by the politics of spite.

Hat wave

 Disability Pride Month and the anniversary of the ADA reminded me of a project I did way back in the late Eighties for the Haymarket People's Fund in Boston. The assignment was a poster for a hat-themed event, and although the design document didn't say anything about including people with disabilities, I put in a guy in a wheelchair smiling and waving his hat in the air. This in turn sparked the idea of a variation on the familiar International Access Symbol with an exuberant hat waving figure, which I added at the bottom. At that time, the association of disability with positivity, joy, or fun was not a big part of the mainstream discourse, but it must have been bubbling up in the activist community in the runup to the passing of the ADA in 1990. After the poster came out, other advocacy groups latched onto my symbol design and used it for their communications.

Pen and ink, typography

(Drawing of people dancing and waving hats in the air.)

Hats Off!

to Haymarket People's Fund

A hat please wear - or make one there!

Come Party -

and bring friends

May 14

Villa Victoria

85 West Newton

Boston's South End

8:00 - 1:00 am

8:00-9:00 snacks, hat making, photos with you and your hat

9:00 A TRIBUTE TO RENAE and her eight years at Haymarket

9:30-1:00 MUCH DANCING: SOUL, MOTOWN,LATIN,ROCK

Sliding scale $5-$25

For more info: (617) 426-1909

Van Horn Park Backstop

I never seem to tire of sketching this backstop. The geometry and perspective are challenging and the play of light on the chain link is intriguing.

This is also a first time trying a new pigment, nickel azo yellow, py150. I've been searching for the ideal yellow for my tiny watercolor box, and am trying this one because it is truly transparent, unlike most of the others. I was always a bit freaked out by this pigment because out of the tube it looks like a particularly unappetizing dull greenish brown. But when you add water and mix it with other colors, it becomes a strong vibrant yellow, good for making natural greens.

Watercolor 4" x 6"

Apple trees on Mt Pollux

I started this one back in April 2019 and wasn't too thrilled with it at the time. I put it up on the studio wall along with its large family of unfinished siblings and just recently returned to it. I'm much happier with it now - I think I needed to acquire the vocabulary to express the way the scene felt to me.

Oil on linen panel 10" x 12" 

Schreber's Watershield

 Schreber's Watershield is what my PictureThis app tells me these waterlily-like but smaller and more ovoid plants are called. They make nice patterns on the water.

Watercolor 4" x 6"