Cool Blue Groove
2015
acrylic, graphite on canvas
24x36


This painting will be up for auction to help raise funds for Life is Good Playmakers.

The Life is good Kids Foundation or “Playmakers” is an organization focused on the  power of optimism as a healing tool.

They primarily serve young children who have been traumatized either through a natural disaster or family abuse/neglect.

Many thanks to Jay Munsey, the organizer of this fundraising golf tournament and auction.

I hope it does well for them!

Fields of Blue

2015
acrylic on canvas
24x36



I am finally wising up to the fact that when I ask friends and fellow artists to weigh in on a painting, it means I am not done, not fully satisfied that I have pushed it as far as I can.

It is as if I am hoping someone’s words will make me feel the way I feel when I know a painting is completed to the best of my ability.

This is probably the most critical thing for any artist to learn:  to learn listen to and trust in their own barometer.  Might actually be the most important thing for any human to learn!

Despite that, I do thank the people who looked at and shared their thoughts on this piece in its last iteration (see last post).

Talking with people you trust about your work can help you develop your inner listening.

Now all I need is a title…….

October Exhibitions

October has been flying by with various show and installation preparations.

In a couple days I will be delivering and installing work for my solo show at The Center at Eagle Hill.
More on that, later.

Already up are three good-sized paintings in the windows at the Hanover Theatre, 2 Southbridge Street, Worcester, MA.

I made these specifically to hang here in the long windows of the contemporary theater facade where they will remain for four months (that's early February 2015).
If you are in the area, take a stroll by and have a look.

Here is a shot after installation:

Kathy Griffin seems pleased, anyway.

Autumn, Sugar Maple
acrylic on canvas
60x20
2014

Solo Show Opens This Friday

Expression, Abstraction and the Meta-landscape

May 9 - May 31, 2014

Imagine Gallery

70 Main Street, 2nd floor

Northampton, MA

Artist reception on May 9th 5:30-8:30 p.m.

free to the public

refreshments

My first solo exhibition opens this week in Northampton, MA.

Curator Tricia McDermott selected thirty pieces in a range of media for this show.

The opening is a part of Arts Night Out Northampton, so there will be lots to see all around town.

Hope to see you there!

Gallery hours:  Fridays 6-9

                            Saturdays 3-9

and by appointment 413-585-5830

The Journal Series Continues

You Gonna Tell Me
What Control Device I Must Develop To Be A Human?
2013
acrylic
36x36


I am still working away at this found journal series.

See the explanation back on Jan 17, 2013 if you don't know what I am referring to.

 I intersperse this work with oil painting and printmaking because it is so intense and emotionally draining.  Very rewarding, though.

Go See Art, Now!

Measurement of the Necessary
2013
40x30
acrylic


















I have been continuing my work with the discarded journal I found many years ago.
This page also contained a list that I loved:
paint
ladder
mIrror   
                                                 
To date I have completed eight paintings in this series.
My plan is to just keep going with it until I can't.
Could be a long trip!

Lots of art to see this weekend.  Central Massachusetts is hopping with Spring shows, despite the prediction of more snow tonight.

I have a figure drawing in Vision as Voice at the House of Art in Monson, MA.

And, for one weekend only, the Gardner Area League of Artists will have their spring show at the PACC in Gardner, MA.

Follow the links for all the details!

Furnished
2013
11x14
acrylic






This small painting is on a canvas panel that I coated with Golden Absorbent Ground which makes the paint respond a little more like paper.

Originally it was a figure study that I was not pleased with, but I was really enjoying the colors and their quiet, muted quality.

I built on the already abstract motif and blocked out the figure.

The resulting image suggests chairs, maybe tables.

Sometimes My Frame of Mind Isn't Framed
2013
40x30
acrylic




This is also from the "Found Journal Series"








This one has some subtle colors that don't come through so well in this picture.  I might try to photograph it again.

From the Found Journal

I Really Would Eat Poison with a Smile



2013
24x24
acrylic








This is another from the Found Journal Series, so please don't get worried about my emotional state!
You can read about it in the previous entry, if you missed it last week.

I am choosing the titles directly from the text.

Today I Am Almost Scared How Fine I Almost Feel
2013
30x40
acrylic

It is a spring evening in 1989 and I am walking down a street in Santa Monica, California.
Blowing down the same street are gobs of papers, partial notebooks, blue exam books, like the contents of a school knapsack emptied at the bus stop by the bully.

I start scooping them up.  I don't know, maybe I thought I was retrieving them for their owner, but there was no one, distraught, running after them.

As it turned out, they were fragments of someone's journal, bits and pieces of anguish spanning a decade.
I do not use the word anguish here lightly.
Contained, barely contained in the scrawl and rambles was a story of such darkness and repeated efforts to crawl out from under unbearable despair.

I do not know who the author is, but she seemed as thrown away and blown away as her papers, and so, I saved them.

Every so often I would pull them out, read some of them over, and then put them away again.  They were just so dark.

But I have kept them, nearly 25 years now, because I felt there had to be something I could do with them.
And I didn't want to give up on her.

I think I am now ready to give them new life.

This painting came out from a page she wrote in 1978.  An up day.

That is where the title comes from.

Seated Model
2013
acrylic on paper
13x10















Finally!  I am back to a regular figure practice.
I am in a 10-week uninstructed group at Emerson Umbrella in Concord, MA.
It feels really good to get back to this sort of thing.

This is from the first meeting, last week.