At the Foreigner's Club o/c 30x30

It has been a while since I posted anything. This blog reminds me that I have made a commitment to myself to keep painting and learning, and that learning requires a steady and continuing effort. The blog helps keep what is near to my heart on the "to do" list.

This is a studio painting from a photograph I took in Sorrento last month. I missed my paints while traveling, and was eager to get back to work when I got home.

This painting was a good counter to the workshop in Easton. There, I had been encouraged to slow down and think through each brush stroke, to have a plan and realize that plan methodically. That approach didn't work well for me because it just didn't feel right. This painting, which is larger than anything I have done in a long time, was done almost entirely in one day over several hours of painting fast with big brushes. I worked intuitively and didn't do a lot of thinking and planning. I have often thought that my goal in painting should be to get my head out of the process and paint from within, to find and trust a more direct route between the experience of seeing and the response of choosing colors, drawing and making marks on canvas. Painting days like this one set me back on the path to that good goal.

House at Shrinemont 8x10 Oil on Linen

Just back from clergy retreat where I listened to some monks, smoked cigars, sipped a bit of whiskey and still managed to find a couple of hours to paint. The sun played hide and seek, and in the space of those two hours the whole side of the house ended up in sunlight. Glad I laid in the light and shadow early.

Sorolla's Garden o/c 22x28

I had hoped to post some new paintings by now, and I had not planned to post any older paintings. This one was done last year, and the only reason I put it here now is that it was just juried into the current show at the Art League Gallery in Old Town and hung on its own wall, which was a salve to my bruised painting ego.

I signed up for a painting class in Easton Maryland with Louis Escobedo, a fine painter whose work I noticed in the American Art Review. Yesterday was the second of four weekly classes, and for the second time I drove ninety miles to Easton and ninety miles back and in a full day of painting didn't manage to do anything but mess up a perfectly good canvas. It's like I have never painted before. I found myself rushing to put something down, and Louis kept saying "make bold strokes." "Think before you make a mark." "Every brush stroke should have a purpose." I heard all that the first week and didn't pay much attention. We were doing a still life and I kept saying to myself that somehow still lifes must be different from landscapes.

This week we worked from a model, and again, it was as if I had never done this, and this week I heard him saying, "slow down." "Think about what you're doing." And he didn't actually say it, but he was telling me to be more deliberate, to plan and make choices about color and such before touching the brush to the canvass. I realized as I was driving home that I don't approach much of anything in life that way. I just kind of jump in and hope for the best.

Then today, I was interviewing candidates and postulants for ordination with the Committee on Priesthood. We met with a couple of very bright rising stars in the process, and one of them talked about the spiritual work of listening and paying attention to what is being invited in relationships with parishioners. He used the words, "Learning to see." He said that had been an important learning for him in the process so far. (I was sketching one of the other members of the committee at the time, and wondering if I would ever learn to see colors well enough to commit boldly to laying them on the canvas, when those words hit me.) This seminarian called me back to the truth that learning to see is a process that takes time and commitment.

I was planing to launch another blog where I spent time with the spiritual implications of learning to paint, but today, there is no separating one discussion or practice from the other. Maybe there is a whole other discussion to be entered into about why one day I paint with confidence and another I paint tentative little strokes designed to do no harm that end up portraying nothing.

Easton again next week. Who knows?

Little Hunting Creek, oil on linen 6x8

This was done along the creek behind my neighborhood. I had gone there to work a second day on a larger canvas. When that project continued to be frustrating and threatened to send me home defeated, I pullout a small panel and turned about 90 degrees to paint another scene. I was glad I stayed.

The Other Shore O/C 9x12

Sometimes morning paintings require a shift in thinking. I went to be planning to get up in the morning and meet the sun. Instead, I found fog and a lot of grey. I decided to set up and wait for something to happen. Finally I gave up and decided to do a study of the emerging image of the Maryland side of the river. Just as I was finishing up, the sun appeared as a bright circle in the fog and then disappeared. It was something like this.

In the Woods O/C 6x8

Of course I can't spend all my time driving around the state. Some days I can make it to some local trail where I spend an hour or so painting before going in to work. This particular morning I was headed out the marsh trail toward the river when the slanting morning splashed this bright streak across the greenery. I never got to the river that morning.

Jewell Overlook O/C 6x8

In the continuing search for inspiration, I spent a Friday recently driving away from the city toward the mountains. I passed several exits that I will explore at some future date, exits leading out into farm country where I think my heart is drawing me. I have really enjoyed Marc Hanson's paintings of the countryside which remind me of the landscape of my youth. I resisted the urge to explore those turns, hoping to reach the National Park and Skyline Drive in time to do some painting. The day was cool and clear, I drove along that great ridge with the windows down and stopped at every overlook. I wandered down side trails, ate a little lunch and had resigned myself to the idea that this would be a scouting trip and probably not involve any painting when I happened upon Jewell Overlook. This little painting brought me great joy and the hour and a half I spent in this spot ended up capping a perfect day.

Fingers in the Sky

6x8 Oil on Linen

Painting in the neighborhood of the church this morning. This spot is a four mile drive from my house, which is across this creek behind the trees. If the creek ever freezes I suppose I could walk to work. A woman walked up while I was painting and said, "oh, you're just sketching. Did you bring a canvas?" Sigh.

Time for an update.

When I started this blog in April, I really just wanted to see what was involved. I wasn't sure I wanted to try to put my work out there quite yet, but I think now it's time to start trying to make this into a real blog. I do this for a few reasons. I have had a pretty good run with juried shows at the Art League Gallery in Alexandria and will be placing works for sale in their bin gallery beginning next month. I want prospective buyers to be able to find out about my work, and this blog seems to be the easiest way to invite that. Also, I have been looking at other people's blogs and at the people who are following their work, and there seems to be an online community out there that I would like to start edging my way into. That is where I was with the blog idea until Saturday when the stranger I was sitting next to on a bus from New York turned out to be an artist. He asked if I had a web site (yes, soon) and we pulled out our sketchbooks and talked art for a good bit of the trip back. So here I am, sprucing up the blog for the next time someone asks, as they often do when I am out in the world painting.

Sometime in the next ten years I want to shift my focus to painting full time. The run up to that transition will involve learning to see, one painting at a time. So with those things in mind, here is some of what I have been painting since April.

At the end of June I went to Longport for three weeks intending to paint every day. Didn't happen. We had a house full of family, which was wonderful, but I couldn't shift gears. I didn't paint until the last week when Mary and I were on our own. These are posted in no particular order. The little painting of the parish hall of the Church of the Redeemer was painted from the comfort of the front porch of the rectory. After that I ventured out further.

"Patch of Blue"

6x8, Oil on linen

The church where I work in Longport each Summer is on the bay. One block in the other direction is the ocean. I painted this one from the front steps of the church.

"Waves of Grass"

6x8, Oil on linen

I still have bites on my legs from the greenhead flies that didn't want me to finish this one. I'm learning to love grey skies, and often prefer them to blue. I also enjoyed the linen-on-birch panels I bought for this trip.

"Bridge Unbrella"

6x8, Oil on linen

I had painted under this bridge before, and since I forgot my painting umbrella, I needed a bit of shade in which to set up for bright-day painting. Shade can be hard to find at the shore, so I keep coming back to this bridge and this time thought I'd put it in the picture.

"From the Rectory"

5x7, Oil on museum board

I could almost see the shadow moving as I painted it.

"Windswept"

6x8, Oil on linen

These clouds blowing in from the ocean looked as if they had had a part in shaping this little island in the bay. This was painted from under the bridge in the earlier painting.

"Cove at Mount Vernon"

6x8, Oil on museum board

Again, I went out to paint what was there without driving all over, hoping I would be inspired. If painting is learning to see, then the picture is probably right in front of me. I stood in the picnic area of Riverside Park and wished at first that I could see that cove without that little tree sticking up on the bank in front of me. Now I'm kind of glad it was there.

"Afternoon at the Creek"

6x8, Oil on canvas

I have done a lot of driving this Spring and Summer looking for places to paint. I have had days where I set out to find a subject and have driven until I was no longer in the mood to paint. After one of those long fruitless jaunts I came home and remembered a path to the creek that runs behind my neighborhood. I have now painted there a few times. It is close, and the changing light and seasons should keep me going for a while.

"Morning Comes"

5x7, Oil on museum board

I spent a lot of the Spring thinking about painting and not really painting. I did some work on my paint box, adapting it to hold panels, and prepared panels and canvases that became an embarrassment as they sat there unused. Finally one morning I threw my gear in the car and headed out at sunrise swearing I would stop at the first turn-out along the river and paint whatever I saw. I got lucky and was home by 7:30 with this little painting.