utah landscape series

Toward Springville, oil, 6.25 x 9

available

When we were out in Utah to adopt our sweet little Ruth, I tried to fill up my camera's memory with photographs. Now, looking back at them, I see that I did fill up my camera's memory, but mostly with pictures of our children and especially one beautiful little girl in particular! But, I do have a healthy amount of images to work with for a new series of Utah landscape paintings. 

Peter's grandparents have a house in Springville, a small town in the foothills of the Wasatch Mountain Range, where we stayed while there. In there basement was a stack of old wooden plaques, just like the ones I often use for my paintings. I thought, I ought to take these home and do a series of Utah landscapes on them! And, so it begins! I had ample opportunities to snap pictures of the wide open landscape from the car as we drove all over Utah. We took several drives up into the nearby canyons. I have quite a few pictures of rainy and misty weather, as well. Plus, a few pictures of some spectacular white clouds against a backdrop of bright blue sky taken on the day we were able to bring Ruth home with us from the hospital! This is my first painting in the series and I hope to paint up the rest of those panels in the next few weeks, so keep your eyes open for these! I will post them on my website and in my Etsy shop as they become available. Plus, if you want to follow me on Facebook, I always post when I have new work to show. Enjoy!

Detail

hush

Hush, 14 x 22, oil

available

I was looking at a painting hanging in our hallway, one I'd painted earlier this year. I had never been completely satisfied with it, but it hung there for me to walk by and inspect multiple times each day. Yesterday I pulled it off the shelf, removed it from my website, and set it up on my easel again. I didn't change the basic composition, besides painting out a sailboat that had been in the original. I wanted more texture, more mood, greater contrast, more movement. I am happy with this version of the painting and it's back up on my wall awaiting a new home when someone stumbles upon it! I wish a photograph could do this painting justice. Much of my work is becoming increasingly more textured and layered, which makes photographing with any accuracy a true challenge! But, for what you can sense from this piece, I hope you enjoy it!

Detail

floating on the horizon

Floating on the Horizon, 24 x 24.5, oil on masonite

available

There is a bit of a back and forth that I go through in cycles. For a while I feel highly motivated and have loads of energy that I channel into making and preparing my own panels for painting. Sometimes I use birth plywood and sometimes I use masonite. I attach the panels to wood support frames so there is a nice finished side profile for the paintings. That way they can be hung as they are without the need for framing if that isn't desirable or possible for a while! A couple weeks ago I bought up some supplies to make four 24" x 24" masonite panels. After cutting everything down to size I realized that the panels actually measure 24" x 24.5"...oops. I don't have the energy or desire to fix that, so they will stay as they are! Close enough! Good thing I'm not a perfectionist in all things... However, after all that hard work to prep the panels I find myself wondering if it would just be simpler and a more efficient use of time to just buy panels already made. I don't mind prepping, like gessoing and priming, etc... The building part is just so time consuming. So, this week I did a run to Blick in Providence...bought up a few cradled wood panels. The boys begged for some larger canvas panels to do some paintings on, so I accommodated them. Yeesh, it's easy to drop a lot of hard earned cash in that place! After racking up my bill I had to say no to the boys' requests for little wooden figure models and tiny packets of modeling clay...I'm so mean! So, perhaps in another month or so I'll get the bug to build some more panels, but for now I'm going to work through the ones I've got and see where we are...

This painting is the first to be done on one of my own panels. I really don't usually like to praise my own paintings, but I really love this one. It's going to be a hard one to say goodbye to, when the time comes, and I hope it comes! The buttery textures and bold contrast in the waves, the rocks, the foreground, and the wispy clouds in the upper left...it all comes together to form the energy of this piece. I was a bit daunted by this painting initially. The panel felt huge for some reason, even though it is not the largest painting by far that I've ever done. I spent a few days working on it, and the brushes came away for the last time yesterday. I walked by my studio for the rest of the day without ever going in for a peak at it. I was a bit afraid of what I would think of it. So, I finally walked back in to see it in the evening, and it worked its magic on me. It's now available! Please take a look at the link above to see more images of this painting!

Detail

First brushstrokes...just the vague idea of the finished painting!

dusting off some paintings

Bay Coast, 9 x 12, oil on canvas

available

I have had a few paintings tucked away that I never made available on my website until now. Sometimes I complete paintings that I'm unsure of. I don't feel they are ready to be listed for sale. Usually I'm just not satisfied, but I feel like I'm done working on them. That's what happened with the pieces in this post. As I was going through my available paintings, preparing them for a studio visit by a potential new collector, I found these hiding in the closet. As I looked at them again with fresh eyes I saw them differently. A mix between feeling they did indeed meet with my approval and feeling like I ought to just let others decide for themselves got me to photograph them and list them for sale in my shop. The one above sold me simply based on that patch of thick baby blue sky.

Here's another older piece (a few months) that I didn't list. It was a study for a possible larger work that I haven't yet executed. I am going to let this one go, too, in the hopes that someone else can enjoy it!

 Tossed, Diptych, 2- 8 x 10 canvas panels

available

Detail of one panel