"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.
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Thank you to my Pacific Northwest collectors, friends and community. I had a very successful show at the Bellevue Museum Fair this year and am so appreciative for everyone’s support and patronage. Some of my favorite paintings sold at the show including the newly completed “Applegate Valley Vines” which sold on the first morning. Fortunately the collector let me hold onto that piece until Sunday so others could see it. I had finished it and had it framed just a few days before we left for the show so it was nice to be able to look at it for a few more days before having to part with it.
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
"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.
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"Green Roofs" Pastel
When I was a kid one of my favorite artists was Andrew Wyeth. I had a bookon 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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I’ve been busy preparing for one of the big events of summer, The Bellevue Art Museum Arts Fair which will be held July 24, 25 and 26 at Bellevue Square in Bellevue Washington. The fair juries in some of the best fine art and contemporary crafts seen in the Western Region. I always end up going home with a new piece of art from the fair. Its one of our favorite shows to do even if the hours are long!
“Sunlit Bungalow” 12.5×7″ is one of the smaller pastels I will be premiering at the Bellevue fair. I hope to see my Pacific Northwest friends and collectors at the show!
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