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.