Totally Random Thoughts About New Work

  OK, this is a fun thing to talk about. I have just returned from a few days on Martha's Vineyard, one of my favorite places. These are three images from there--the one above left is new, a rather quick acrylic sketch. The one on the right is an older one. Both are almost in the same location, both early in the morning. In fact, the ferry on the left is coming in to dock just to the left of the tug on the right. At the bottom is an older oil rendering of the path to a nearby beach at day's [...]

These are two paintings from Montgomery Bell State Park in Burns, Tennessee, a little less than an hour from my Nashville home. This 3850-acre park offers artists many opportunities and inducements to paint, including annual plein air paint-outs and exhibit opportunities in the park's welcome center.   The park was named after Montgomery Bell, the most famous iron tycoon in the Dickson County area. Beginning in the early 1800s, the iron industry was prominent here. The Laurel Furnace, built in 1815, was located within what later became this park, and was an important facility in the iron industry, producing pig iron and hollow [...]

  It definitely remains to be seen whether the new shoulder is a better painter than the old, but I'm pleased (and relieved!) to be able to offer a couple of small acrylic sketches from the past week. These are the same daffodil from my garden; it lasted just long enough after cutting to allow a couple of renderings.   I had thought of daffodils as rather ordinary, although with bonus points for being some of the first flowers to bloom in spring. I have since learned, however, that daffodils come in a great variety of shapes, with colors ranging from the palest pinks [...]

  I have only one new piece to offer this month, a charcoal drawing of one of my favorite views, early morning on my street in Nashville, TN. Our town was hard hit by a winter storm (Fern was her name) this past week, leaving most of us without power. Many are still without power in frigid temperatures. It has been quite an adventure, that we do not need to repeat. (Can't promise work in the coming month either, while the magic of orthopedic surgery provides me with a replacement of my dominant shoulder--amazing! But more will come soon. Could the new [...]

Continuing last month's theme of switching gears, this month I have put the acrylic paints away and pulled out pastels, with which I am sorely out of practice. Pastels come in a vast variety of colors, and also in a range of hardnesses, determined by the amount of pigment to binder they contain. Hard ones contain more binder. Soft ones, being higher in pigment, are more vibrant in color. They can feel deliciously soft and buttery to work with, and are also quite fragile. Most often I will begin a painting with hard pastels, almost as an underpainting, and then switch [...]

  Here are a few small still lifes to get in the holiday mood. It was fun to switch gears from painting landscapes to painting small still lifes. And although the principles are basically the same as for landscapes, I feel like there is perhaps a slightly different skill set needed. The materials are different--glass, metal, ceramics, usually in addition to organic shapes (no organic shapes here!). Also, there are more hard edges and, ah yes, reflections. I love painting metals and reflections as much as I love painting water. When painting, I don't name what I'm painting--it's just what is the shape, [...]

  Wow. November already. I have only one new painting to offer this month, and it is focused on December for a local show at the Gallery at Mulberry Mill in Dickson, Tennessee. The theme is White Christmas and each artist is invited to submit one work. Fun!   This house sits across from mine in Nashville. I do not actually know its occupants, but they might be surprised to know I've painted their house so many times! Two are below, from the other side of the house.   So the thing about this painting is that I'm not very happy with my execution. It has [...]

                              The good folks at Montgomery Bell State Park host a plein air competition each spring. It's a delight to paint there with other plein air artists. In 2025, the park invited artists to celebrate the natural beauty of the park by exhibiting their paintings at the park's Welcome Center for a month. My month is November, which gave me time to explore the park and paint some of the spots that most enchanted me.   The small stone chapel is the Cumberland Presbyterian Church Shrine, built in the 1960s, but it is attached to a much older history. The Cumberland Presbyterian Church was founded in 1810 during [...]

I don't have finished work to offer this month. It's summer, I have done some traveling, and I have been taking a month-long online painting workshop from a terrific local painter and instructor, Anne Blair Brown. Those are my excuses! (Visualize here cringy the-dog-ate-my-homework smile.) I have been working on a thing, though, that I think is important and that needs more time. The thing is this: I often happen upon scenes that touch me with their beauty, but that I know immediately will be difficult for me to convey in a painting with the poignancy that I feel. Usually they are settings of quiet beauty. One [...]

  Most mornings, my first act is to launch myself out my front door, turn right, and head west for a walk of one and a half miles around my neighborhood.   Same route, every day. For two and a half years.   I pass many neighbors whom I know only by face but not name, and most of us greet each other good morning. Many are walking their dogs. I do know some of the dogs' names (I'm talking about you, Sam). Some are running, either alone or in small groups. I'm just walking and looking around. It's crazy but even after two and a [...]