Abend Gallery Annual Holiday Miniatures Show, Nov. 3 - Dec. 1, 2018

"Pomegranate at 10:00"

Oil, 8" x 10"

Click here for purchase information

Every year, Abend Gallery in Denver, CO has an eagerly anticipated miniatures show and sale. I'm really happy to have this little piece included in this 2018 show.

My favorite way to paint outside is to return to the same spot over and over, at the same time of the day. It's fascinating to watch the changes that take place within a small space in a time frame before the light changes, especially when I'm painting living things. One year I had a morning painting in one location, a noontime still life painting in my studio, and a late afternoon painting going on, too. 

There's also the experience of being The Quiet Watcher. Artists often tell me how they are visited by deer and birds when they paint this way. In the case of this painting, I was greeted by at least three species of lizards as well as a few hummingbirds.

The Abend show starts on November 3 with a 6:00 opening party, please come if you can make it!

"Phoenix in the Distance"

"Phoenix in the Distance", 8" x 14"

Painted on site at Echo Canyon, before they closed it off. What is going on there these days, anyway? The trail has gotten too busy, I guess. It's a shame.

One of the extraordinary things about Phoenix is the collection of city mountain trail parks. When I first moved here I hiked the Echo Canyon trail several times a week (yes, to the top, or usually to the top, you scoffers) and developed a massive superhero physique. (Something like that doesn't stand out in Phoenix, though, since there seem to be thousands of people with superhero physiques here, I think they are all drifting over from California or something.) I've had to cut this mountain training stuff out, though and I don't have these superpowers anymore, but I can still make it up to some of these rocky outcroppings with my painting gear.

This painting will be at the Scottsdale Artists' School annual fundraising Beaux Arts Bash, held this year on Nov. 9th, 2013. The bash is a wonderful way to help out the school and purchase work from contributing artists. Many of the artists who teach in Scottsdale donate art to the school for the fundraiser and so you'll have the chance to buy work from many of your favorite workshop and weekly teachers. Information about the sale is at the school website.

The party is fun and the sale is exciting. There's also the kind of friendly glee that can only come from a city populated by Midwesterners from places like Chicago, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota or Michigan, people who are still dazed with happiness and gratitude over the splendid Valley fall weather and by no longer rolling their cars in midnight icestorms on the I-94.

A Kickstarter Project: The Miira View Frame

I love the idea of a couple of determined artists getting together to create a product that is useful to artists and will create work for local people. If you haven't used Kickstarter before, I recommend you take a look to see all the dreams that are out there and see if you can do something to help projects you can wrap your head around.

I don't know these artists, but I think their idea - a plastic viewfinder with magnetic grids - would be an extremely useful tool. I would like to think that somewhere a covey of earnest, thoughtful children will be finding angles with magnets and squinting down.

This company is also developing an iphone app that does the same thing. I will probably get one of these too but I think it is a good idea to put the plastic grids into production. I think I'd rather use the plastic grid during the course of planning a painting.

A lot of artists begin their paintings by developing some kind of compositional gridding system to help them plan the design of the picture plane, in addition to a means to find angles, copy subjects to scale or drawings scaled up to transfer to the canvas. That's the subject of a later post, I guess.

If you think of Oklahoma as a vague fly-over state, it's a state filled with very nice people who have to put up with tornadoes, weather extremes and people bursting into that song "Ohhhk-lahoma" who only know the first line of the song.

Here's the video for the Miira View Frame (their website is here) - please fund this because I would really like to own one of these!

"Surf at Gull Cove" at The Bennington Center for the Arts, Bennington, VT

My painting Surf at Gull Cove (oil, 12" x 16") has been selected to be in the Impressions of New England show at the The Bennington Center for the Arts in Bennington, VT. The show runs from July 14th through September 23rd, 2012, with an opening reception on July 21st.

I'm honored to be in this show and so happy that this particular painting is in it. It's one of the paintings from my journey to Monhegan Island, Maine within the past year. Seeing this painting lets me experience all the senses I felt when I was on that rocky spot - the salt spray, the crash of the waves, the incredible blues and greens of the Atlantic and the excitement of being so close to some serious surf. I'm ready for another trip to Maine.

Paintings of Monhegan Island, Maine

I recently had the chance to paint with a group of artist friends on historic Monhegan Island, Maine. Artists have been travelling to the island for decades to paint the rocks, coast, forests and maritime scenery. This was a wonderful opportunity to experience a landscape so unlike where I live now, and of course to share ideas and learn from other plein air painters.  Here are two paintings of mine:

"Morning at Gull Cove", Oil, 12" x 16"

"Surf at Lobster Cove", Oil, 12" x 16"












And here's a photo of me with some wonderful artist friends...

L to R: Judy Carducci, Sue Braswell, Me, Greer Jennison, Alex Tyng, Carolyn Lewis, Diana Ansley