Orchid on green...

I have fun with these orchid paintings and playing with how the flowers look against different colored backgrounds. This one is posing in front of another painting so I could have a fun green to play the flowers off of. I also enjoyed painting the leaves of the spider plant in this one. It was a challenge figuring out how much to simplify that mass of information with all of those leaves.

In the previous poll question I asked which form of expression has been the most moving for you. With 102 votes the results were:

painting 66%
music 15%
writing 7%
photography 6%
dance 3%
theater 2%
sculpture 1%

My wife says I should not be surprised by these results, since this is a blog about painting. But I have to admit I am a little surprised. I love making paintings, and I do find them moving and exciting, but I also have had more intense reactions to other forms of art. For me, music is consistently the art form that stirs strong emotions. I do not have as deep of an understanding of it, and I am amateurish at making music, but I find a strong connection to it. I have occasionally seen a painting bring someone to tears, and I am always interested to see that. I think part of my vote here has to do with the way I look at art. I spend my whole life trying to analyze paintings and problem solve my own work. Maybe that makes it harder for me to have a truly emotional reaction to a painting/drawing? I don’t know. But it was fun to see the way people were voting. If anyone had a specific piece of art they were thinking of when answering this poll, I would be curious to hear what it was. Maybe you could mention it in the comments below so others can see too.

Red Orchid...

I have two orchids in the house, and I love the shape of the plant, the stem, and the flowers. They also look great in different kinds of light. I am not painting many still lifes these days, but they are still a fun project on a rainy day.

So, I am posting a new poll question: Do you find better results when you wait for inspiration to make art, or do you prefer to work regardless of inspiration and see if you can make something of it? Sorry for the delay in posting it simultaneously with this blog post. I look forward to seeing your answers.

Hook and Ladder...

This is about 20×48″, and was painted out in Hope on a friend’s property. I had fun with the brushwork and color on the back half of the truck, as compared to the realism on the front half. While looking for a good vantage point for this painting, I found that I liked being close to the truck, which gave me a kind of fish-eye lens perspective. This makes for an odd composition, but I like it.

Still Life...

One of my first winters in Maine was spent working on the still life. As a landscape painter, I was a little unsure where to start. I found I really enjoyed the color of ornate tablecloths and the view of the table from above… a more aerial perspective. The tablecloth in each painting set a sort of color scheme for that painting. It was tough, but also fun to play around with the objects and the design of each composition also.

Looking back on these paintings, these are my favorites because they are simpler and more graphic than some of the others.

Beach Paintings...

While living at the beach in New Jersey, I started painting plein air more often, and also developed a series of paintings of the screen porch. I looked at Matisse quite a bit and worked towards capturing the differences in color between interior and exterior light.

This screen porch was a great subject to play with. For one the architecture of the room was a great framing element to organize the space. The view of the landscape outside is a series of sand dunes with sparse vegetation, which also made for some interesting shapes.

There are parts of these paintings that I still enjoy very much. I think they have a great energy and spirit to them. There are also things I wish I could change, but that is true with almost every painting I see again after a few years away from it. I guess that is the nature of the beast with painting, but it also makes me feel vulnerable posting some of these older images. It’s weird posting paintings that I am proud of, but also are things that I did 10+ years ago.