"Dream With A View" Pastel 26.5x40"

This time of year is my busiest with school starting up for my daughter and the summer show season winding down.   Though there’s technically still several weeks of summer left there is a definite shift that happens with the advent of these two events each year.    I’ve been so busy painting in my studio, still working on commissions and creating new pieces to show at Sausalito.   I just finished this pastel this morning in time to get it to the framer.    Titled “Dream with a View” this is a rendition of my own version of a “dream” home.     Pulling from my inspiration of a heightened reality this painting reminds me of  walking into a lucid dream – a theme that has shown up repeatedly in my work.

If you’re in the Bay Area for Labor Day Weekend the Sausalito Art Festival is a great event with wonderful art, entertainment, food and libations.   I’ll be in Booth Space 600 right near the entrance.   This is my 11th year in a row exhibiting at the festival and it is my favorite event of the year.   Simultaneously,  I am exhibiting as part of a group show of landscape artists at Robert Allen Gallery, also in Sausalito.

The Bellevue show is long hours (12 hour days) but when you are in the company of funny, friendly artists it is a lot of fun.    On the way up and down we broke up our trip and stayed at a wonderful b&b in Eugene, Oregon called  The Augusta House.  If you are looking for a luxury inn in that area, I cannot recommend this place enough.     It is truly a cut above and as frequent travellers we tend to be picky.

I’m back in the studio working on commissions from the show as well as preparing for the Sausalito Art Festival coming up over Labor Day weekend.   I have some paintings that were nearly finished prior to Bellevue and will be posting those soon.

Its back to the studio for me.   Until next time…..

Bellevue Booth Display

The Loaded Suburban

I’ll be bringing new work to the show that has not been seen in the Pacific Northwest.   Included is a large scale Vineyard painting from the Applegate Valley in Oregon.   The landscape is beautiful there.   I’m looking forward to seeing my treasured Northwest collectors at the show and hopefully meeting some new ones.    I’ve posted new paintings in the galleries so be sure to take a look.    See you at the fair, this Friday, Saturday and Sunday, July 23-25!

"Applegate Valley Vines" 25x39" Pastel

"Collingwood Potting Shed" 12x12 Pastel

We spent this afternoon at a traditional summer garden party.  Lots of fresh, organic food and plenty of margaritas to enjoy.    It was relatively warm for the Humboldt County coast – holding steady in the 70’s with the sun shining.   Our friends, the Collingwoods have a magnificent property that I have been expoloring and recently did this piece from their garden.   I plan on continuing the series along with others I have in the works…..so many paintings, so little time.   A lovely day in paradise on the north coast of California.

The Artist with Sister Kitty and Brother Chris

June and half of July has come and gone.   A brief illness followed by a wonderful vacation to Southern California absorbed the better part of the past 6 weeks.   I celebrated my birthday on the 4th of July in southern California at the beach home of my dear sister Kitty and brother in law Jim.   I am one of eleven children and it seems that a lot of the creativity in the family was concentrated in the middle 3 kids, including my brother, Chris,  who works as a prop master and art director for commercials and has played guitar since he was a kid and my sister who has put her energies into becoming a great chef and master gardener.  We were all together for the holiday and it was a lot of fun.    So much creativity in one room infused with  even more wit and humor.   I bet there are a lot of reasons that the middle kids from a big family would become the creative ones….I’m just glad we did and that we enjoy each others company as much as we do.

Back to the studio and time to get ready for upcoming shows.   I have some vineyard paintings in the works and ideas overflowing so check back for new work.

Its festival season and this year I will be participating in three, starting with the Los Altos Rotary Fine Art Show this coming weekend, May 15&16.   I have been participating in this show for a decade and in addition to having met a lot of incredible people, I’ve placed my work in more private collections than I can count in Los Altos and the surrounding area.   Los Altos is very special to me and I’m looking forward to seeing all of my friends this weekend!    If you are in the area I encourage you to come by.   I’ll be in booth 310, not too far from the entrance to the show.    ”November Gold” is one of the new pastels I will be premiering at this event.   Hope to see  you there!

When I was a kid one of my favorite artists was Andrew Wyeth.   I had a book on his art and I remember studying it and admiring  the beautiful starkness of mood he was able to create with his gorgeous watercolors and egg tempera paintings, two media that I myself delved into “back in the day.”   Later it was Edward Hopper who I meditated on with abandon.   My dear friend from art school, Terry Jane and I flew to San Francisco from L.A. to see his retrospective at SF’s MOMA in 1981.   We still laugh because we had to carry our luggage through the museum.   Apparently we would have done anything to see a once in a lifetime event like that.   Hopper’s landscapes propelled the painter within me.    The common thread between the two is the sense of stillness, of solitude these artists so beautifully achieve in their depictions of scenes from their  surroundings and their travels.

In the series of work I have been developing over the past several years involving rural architecture, I feel a sense of going back to my roots as a painter to the initial inspirations that guided what my painting has always been about at its core.  Though my earliest work was decidedly more suburban in subject matter – as was my actual surroundings,  the thread of my early obsession with painting masters Wyeth and Hopper was always there.

In my work, and with pastel specifically there is a tendency for it to create a dreamlike atmospheric feeling in the finished work.    Since I continue to play with the premise of a heightened sense of reality or a dreamlike version of same, it continues to be my favorite medium of choice.   My latest completed pastel landscape painting in the rural architecture series is “Green Roofs.”  I was very attracted to this composition for its sense of disquieting calm amidst a blaze of color, pattern and light.

And the journey continues…..

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Now, the last of the land, property and buildings had been sold and she wanted to give her parents a gift for Christmas to memorialize the property – a pastel painting for their new home which they were in the process of building. After spending an afternoon walking the property and taking reference photographs I chose a composition from one of Trish’s favorite areas of the property to do the painting from.

On Christmas, Trish’s parents were presented with the painting and were reportedly elated.   This was one of the most enjoyable commissions I’ve worked on and I’ve created hundreds in my career.   Trish selected another painting I created from the site – of the grainery building seen below.   After giving a gift like that she had to go home with something  to remind  her  of such an amazing and historically significant place.   Thank you Trish and thank you Emerson Family!

"Yellow House at the End"

My recent pastel painting “Yellow House at the End”  received a “Best of Landscape” award at the 52nd Annual Spring Exhibition at the Morris Graves Museum of Art in Eureka, CA this past weekend.   This is one of a continuing series I have been developing over the past few years of compositions from local alleys and street views from the area in which I live.    The juror for this event was Debra Lehane, curator of the Voigt Family Sculpture Foundation in Geyserville, CA.