Randolph Field

Now that snow has fallen here on Vulture Mountain, this is a happy memory of summer.  It was painted on a sunny July morning standing in a churchyard in Randolph.

"July Field, Randolph"  oil  8"x10"

It is a small plein air painting that attempts to capture the feeling of that warm summer day.  It is lovely to have such a view of nature available as the days are becoming gloomy and cold...

Four Flowers

This is the second series of four little watercolors.  The inspiration comes from flowers I have been drawing recently in conjunction with making a series of soft cut linoleum prints.  

I wanted to use simple brush strokes to carry the meaning and speak the reality of iris, sunflower, etc. without being too representational.  So, quirky and humorous though they may be, I think they capture the feel of joy that flowers bring to me.

A few days later, I watercolored some bright yellow and orange paper and cut it into geometric shapes to add my human intrusion into the little flower paintings.  And here are the completed four flower paintings....

I intuited what I thought they needed to become complete....  It's difficult to see it in these photos but the yellow and orange pieces add a third dimensionality to the paintings since they warp nicely.

Being Experimental...

I've been enjoying making some small watercolors with a calligraphic feel to them.  Poking around in the library, I came upon a book of sketches and studies by Robert Motherwell and I realized that his Abstract Expressionist work has an spontaneous, calligraphic feel to it.   Then, I looked at several books on Asian art and experimental watercolor and thought about my experience teaching a bit of Chinese brush painting to my Painting One students years ago.  This all led me to create the four 5"x7" watercolors below.  I used a mixture of indigo and ultramarine blues and a soft, wide, flat brush to paint them.

These remind me also of the storyboards I used to put together when working on computer graphics for Colony Video.  I decided that it would be fun to add some collage images to the paintings.  So, I painted some deep red paper and cut it into shapes that I attached to the paper with acrylic medium.  The shapes are not flat but rather curved and make for an interesting low relief.

I am not sure what the story is that they are telling and I am not sure where these are going but I do have more on my drawing board at the studio....

A Plein Air Day

This week, Sandy and I went to Braintree Hill in Randolph to paint plein air one lovely, sunny morning.  At the top of the hill is an old church and graveyard.  I got so taken up with taking photographs of the cemetery nearby, I ran out of time to paint.  So, instead, I sketched.  

Here are a couple of drawings from our time outdoors in the fresh air...

This is a marker drawing of an ancient tree that caught my eye.  I loved the way the trunk split into two separate sections and how full the tree was despite its age.  It looked like an apple tree to me but it had no apples so maybe it's some other kind.  Sitting on a stone fence was not the most comfortable place to rest!

And this pencil sketch is the view looking back up the road to the crest of the hill.  To the right was a corn field and the sun was warm and friendly as I sat on the bumper of the car....