Connecticut River Snow Scenw

 I did a watercolor of this scene on the Connecticut River Walk and Bikeway in Springfield, MA back in November with some fall color. Here it is after the first snow, using gray and white ink on gray toned paper.

Connecticut River Stumps

 A watercolor sketch from today at the Connecticut River Walk and Bikeway in Springfield, MA. There was beautiful light on the white stumps against the dark river. The clouds alternately illuminated and shaded the trees on the opposite bank.

Ancient Oak

 This ancient oak lives at the abandoned golf course. It's battered and broken but still able to kindle an incandescent fire. Like American democracy?

oil on panel 10" x 12"

Connecticut River Walk Structure

 I'm always fascinated by those cryptic obelisks that stand guard over the urban landscape, ostensibly contributing to legitimate civil engineering functions but suggesting a portal to the realm of the Morlocks.

This is from a rainy walk this morning on the Connecticut River Walk and Bikeway in Springfield, MA.

Very happy and somewhat shocked to report that Three Women won First Place at the Thinning of the Veil show at Arts Center East in Vernon, CT. This is a very interesting show with an intriguing theme, up through October 30. Well worth a visit if you are in the area.

https://artscentereast.org/thinning-of-the-veil/

Arts Center East
709 Hartford Turnpike
Vernon, CT 06066

Oct 8 - Oct 30
Thurs - Sat 1PM - 5PM

Thanks to Steve Wilda, who juried the show and creates profound and evocative artwork:

http://www.stevewilda.com/

 I'm thrilled to learn that these two will be included the upcoming exhibition "Thinning of the Veil," at Art Center East in Vernon, CT. This show intrigued me from the moment I saw the announcement, which invoked the words of Federico García-Lorca, of arsenic lobster fame, to describe its theme of death, love, art, and the idea that the separation between the worlds of the living and the dead becomes more permeable at this time of year.

Farmall

scratchboard and pen on claybord

9" x 14"

Three Women

oil on linen

40" x 46"

artscentereast.org/thinning-of-the-veil

Arts Center East

709 Hartford Turnpike

Vernon, CT 06066

Oct 8 - Oct 30

Thurs - Sat 1PM - 5PM

4th Annual Northeast Fine Arts Exhibition

 These three pieces have been accepted for the 4th Annual Northeast Fine Arts Exhibition in Ware, MA.

Shed Roof won Second Place for Oils!

Hickory Ridge Barn

Oil 6" x 8"

Provincetown from Truro

Oil 6" x 8"

Shed Roof

Oil 10" x 12"

4th Annual Northeast Fine Arts Exhibition

Workshop13,

13 Church St.

Ware, MA 01082

Reception: Saturday, September 24th 1 to 4 pm.

Show Dates and Times:

September 24th to October 9th

Fridays,  4 to 7 pm

Saturday & Sundays, 1 to 4 pm.

29th Annual Piedmont Art Show

 These four pieces have been accepted for the 29th Annual Piedmont Art Show in Somers, CT. Rebecca Profile received a Merit Award.

Little Tinker Hill, Autumn

Oil 14.5" X 21.5"

Apple Trees on Mount Pollux

Oil 10" x 12"

Truro Breakwater

Oil 6" x 8"

Rebecca Profile

Ink and white gouache on toned paper

9" x 9"

29th Annual Piedmont Art Show

600 Main St Somers, CT

Reception: Sept 18 1-3

Hours:

Sept 22-23 12-4

Sept 24-25 10 -2

Sept 29-30 12-4

Oct 1-2 10-2

A little foliage study from today's Van Horn Park walk. I'm working on a picture idea that includes foliage along a path, so I was doing field research.

Pen and ink 4" X 6"

 

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"

Hickory Ridge Barn

I started this back in May and returned to it recently. It is now at the stage I am calling "asympotschke" - when continued daubing produces ever smaller returns while never quite reaching completion. 

Oil on linen panel 6" x 8" 

I used my small cigar box pochade mounted on my bike to paint the view from a local abandoned golf course.

Backstop

Sketch from this morning's walk at Van Horn Park, visiting my old friend the softball backstop. I was interested in the weeds growing around the base, but no sooner had I started sketching than a guy showed up with a weedwacker and started mowing them down. So I included him and quickly indicated the as yet un-wacked weeds. Also made a mess of the superstructure but that's another story.

Ink, white gouache on toned paper

Provincetown from Truro

Last of the Cape batch. It was mostly cloudy, with rays of sun breaking through occasionally.

Oil on linen panel 6" x 8"

Breakwater

I posted the initial block-in of this earlier; I'm calling this the finished version. It's really an amalgam of many views, sketches and photos of this subject during a short stay on Cape Cod. The rocks are covered in seaweed, and change color and catch the light in constantly changing combinations depending on time of day and tides. This view is contre jour with the morning sun approaching the zenith (check out the light on the buoy), so there are dark shadows and a bit of glare on the wet rocks.

Oil on linen panel 6" x 8"

Grotto

I was struck by the contrast of the sunlit foliage and the dark shadows, especially that stygian grotto on the left. The water was specked with some orangey brown stuff (pollen?) that was set off by the dark reflections.

Watercolor 4” x 6” 

 Pallets behind Atlantic Spice Co in Truro, MA.

I only had time to get a very rough outline drawn, and didn't take a photo, so most of this is from memory. I had done this same subject last year, so I had some previous knowledge to fall back on.

I liked the way the wall was stalwartly stemming the tide of foliage bursting over the top.

2022

2021

Three studies of waves

First is from yesterday morning; the water was relatively calm and the sun was out. By yesterday evening, it had clouded over, the wind was up, and the water was choppier. This morning it was full on rain and fog, and the waves were much bigger and more organized into long breakers.

Ink wash and white ink on toned paper in sketchbook 4" x 6"

Oil sketch of breakwater

 I did this in two short sessions after researching the local tides charts so as to maximize time painting at low tide. At this point I have the main shapes blocked in and some indication of the lights and darks. We go home tomorrow, so any further progress will have to be from memory or photo ref.

Surf and spume

Watercolor study of surf and spume. The main factors here are the waves and ripples reflecting the sky from different angles, the sandy bottom refracted up through the water, and the foamy spume on the surface. It's easy to trance out gazing at the ever-changing patterns.

The other side of the breakwater

 A pen and ink sketch of the other side of the breakwater. Definitely some proportion errors going on. The tide was going out, IIRC, - either way, it has bedeviling effect on my judgment of shapes and relative sizes as the baseline keeps changing.

Breakwater in pen and ink

 Fragmentary pen and ink study of breakwater. I want to do more straight up pen and ink on white paper - a spartan discipline with no color or even gray scale, but very versatile as evidenced by the great 19th C illustrators. Not sure if I want to finish this, either from life or photo ref, or leave it.

I went back the next day and continued work on the pen and ink drawing of the breakwater. I don't know if it improved the image but it was good exercise in rendering shapes, values, and textures.

Breakwater in black and white on toned paper

Another version of the breakwater, this time in overcast morning light. This is a tricky subject, because the tide is alway either coming in or going out, at a rate right on the edge of perceptibility, like the minute hand of a clock. Not only do parts of the structure disappear as the tide comes in, but the water's edge, which ordinarily would be a useful reference point, is always changing as well. The only constant is the horizon.

View of Provincetown, MA from Truro

There was a many-layered cloudy sky behind the iconic Pilgrim Monument tower. Don't know if I'll work on this more - it might be better to leave it as is and possibly use it as the basis for a larger, more planned out painting.

Sphinx

This breakwater of dark, seaweed encrusted boulders reaching into the sea from the beach was catching the late rays of the setting sun. The rocks were the most brilliant thing in the scene despite being also the darkest.

4" x 6" ink on bristol in sketchbook.

Backstop at Van Horn Park, Spring 2022

Revisited that backstop at Van Horn Park, now with green grass and clover replacing the snow of my last sketch.

 My town recently acquired a disused golf course and has been letting it return to a quasi-natural state for recreational uses by the public. It's very beautiful and bucolic, but has an undertone of eldritch, a hint of JG Ballard, especially the overgrown sand traps.

Ink and white gouache on toned paper.

Wet panel carrier

 I made a serviceable little wet panel carrier for the 6" x 8"s that I use with the small cigar box pochade out of scraps of birch plywood. It holds up to 8 panels back to back in four slots, which I hogged out with the table saw and cleaned up with the Dremel tool. The top is held on with Velcro.