A Canna Lily in Full Bloom

This is a gouache (opaque watercolor) painting on Fredrix watercolor canvas.
I used Winsor & Newton Aquapasto first, put on extra-thinly with a credit
car, because when I first painted, the paint crawled and beaded very badly.
This may be because the canvas was severaly years old. - The Aquapasto
created a thin film that allowed me to lay color down on the canvas surface.
I put in a lot of different hues of green and gold in the background and yellow
on the flower and let that dry. - After it was all dry, I put another layer of
Aquapasto on thinly with a credit card, but just on the flower. Then a put a thin
layer of a mixture of cad red light and peony red (Holbein). The medium allowed
me to create texture in the red, creating similar effects to those that one sees on
Canna Lilies, which often have bright, variegated petals. I love gouache!

Blue Cloud

Oil paint on Gessoed Dutch Archival Painting paper. I love the colos in this paintings, and even though it is very simple, it
gives  me a very good feeling when I look at it. It measurses about 7"x 5" , with a 3/4" white margin all around. I use a wax
medium with this, that was mixed with an alkyd medium. It dried very quickly, and gave a very matte appearance which is
pleasant in a serene compostion like this.                                                                                                                     BUY

Toulouse as a Poster

This is a lithograph of a friend of mine. It is a lightly hand-colored lithograph on
BFK Rives white printmaking paper. The hands aren't there because they aren't
supposed to be, in case you are wondering. I liked the shadows of the fingers, and
just suggesting some things better than drawing everything. It was particularly her
incredible eyes that I wanted to be the focus of the picture. This is not a portrait, it
is a work of graphic art, done for a particular purpose.                                     BID

Seated Girl Painted in Oil Washes



This piece was done in class in a technique that I have mentioned
before on this blog: "peinture a l'essence", or, in English, painting
with solvent. Just to quickly review for those of you who do not know
what this means - it is a way of using paint so that the linseed oil in it
(which in its natural state in the paint is very corrosve) will not damage
the paper. It is just necessary to lay your paint out on some heavy paper
such as printmaking blotters, covered, overnight, and the oil will leach out
       into the paper. The next day you scrape what is left onto your palette, and
dilute it with solvent. This manner of painting was very popular with Degas
and Toulouse-Lautrec - Lautec painted many of his paintingson carboard.
   You should give this a try - it is fun.                                                BID 

Chinoiserie Triptych

This triptych was inspired by a painting by John Waterhouse of The
Lady of Shallot, although I didn't realize it at the time. Years ago I had
a reproduction of that painting on my wall because I thought it was really
wonderful. Years later I did this. This is acually the second one I have done,
because the first one was never returned by an unscrupulous art dealer in
California. Yes, that is the life of an artist. I never got any money for the
painting, and I never even got the painting back, so that I could enjoy it myself.
So, I decided to do another, similar one. It was at that time when I was looking
casually through my daughter's book of John Waterhouse paintings and spotted
the exact same pose - facing in the other direction- of the Lady of Shalott! It is
funny how the mind stores things away. Some of them are identified clearly
day to day, and others dwell in this more dream-like, design-oriented (if you are
an artist, I suppose) area. I guess I accessed that area without realizing it.
The two palest yellow vertical strips are for the gold-leafed mat that a potential
framer would construct to go around this painting. It was done on board in oils,
and oil glazes, and will be mounted on wood.                                                                                SOLD

Bearded Iris

I keep all of my gouache, and gouache/watercolor paintings in Canson watercolor
paper spiral-bound notebooks. I have been doing this for about ten years. I like the paper,
because it doesn't wrikle very much, as long as I confine my composition to a fairly
small area, and it also takes the Cotman watercolors - which I like to combine with
my Caran d'ache gouache paints - very well. Sometimes, if I know I am gong to use
a lot of watercoor in a piece, I will use Liftng Preparation first and allow that to dry
before I start working. That makes it easier to remove any color I may want to. Of
course, this is not essential when working with gouache, because it is opaque, and
you can paint over anything, but sometimes you may want a more transparent area
in your work. I also really enjoy working with the new watercolor canvas that came
out a couple of years ago. You can do virtually anything on that - for watercolorists
it's a dream because it is really easy to life from. As long as you keep your compositions
very small - which mine are, just naturally - you don't need to do any preparation. But,
if you want to use a whole sheet, you need to stretch it just like a piece of regular watercolor
paper, or it will buckle and wrinkle on you. This can be most upsetting. - If you look at my
piece above, you can see that I used both opaque and transparent paint. I particularly like
the curled petal on the bottom right that is very lavendar with a highlight. Then, there is
a semi-transparent wash behind that, that really emphasizes the solidity of the curled petal.
I like the colors in this piece.                                                                                          BID

Black and White Chalk Drawing (after Robert Barret (?))

I have to say that I really like this drawing. The funny thing is, I don't even really remember doing it.
It's in a notebook I have of some rather strange, smooth gray paper, that I think may have been made
out of recycled paper, because there are tiny flecks of barely visible color in it that actually show up
more in a photograph than to the naked eye. Here I am using a very time-honored technique - a mid-
tone paper paired with black and white chalk or pencils. One could also use sepia, sanguine, really
any dark color that would serve to represent the shadowed areas of the form. That is the whole point
really, of using the toned paper with these materials. The toned paper functions as the mid-tones, or
evenly-illuminated parts of the body, the white expresses strong illumination, and the dark pencil renders
the form with more detail and shadows of different values, the degree to which it is developed is really
a function of the artist's style. Having said all that, what I really like about this drawing is the lines. BID            

Black and White Head of Hypnos

This is yet another drawing of my beloved Head of Hypnos. I do not know who sculpted it. Perhaps someone does? But I have never seen any attribution given in any book. Perhaps it is just too ancient, and was never signed, or was effaced at
some point, like so many works of art because of some disagreement, often beginning with a one of a religious nature as in
our society today. But I can't imagine everyone not agreeing on one fact - that this is a sublimely beautiful object of a bizarre
nature and endless fascination. It is utterly inspiring to me - but I have always found ancient objects to be artistically inspiring. I don't know why, and I guess it doesn't really matter in the end. Even though this is my own drawing I find it just
as hypnotic as the sculpture itself. That is a very nice feeling to have. I have done plenty of duds, but here I feel I captured how I see, and what I feel about the Head of Hypnos. and it doesn't matter to me what anyone else feels. If they like it, that
is wonderful, but if they don't, well, that is alright too. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" my mother always told me,
and she was right.                                                                                                             Buy It Now

Gabe in Class on Monday

Oil on shellacked Canson Paper, done while teaching Expressive and Gestural Figure Painting at the Art League School in Alexandria, Virginia. This sketch was about thirty minutes long.                                                  Buy It Now

Second Version of Caribbean Memory

Oil on Linen laid down on board, 14" x 20"

Pink Cloud Landscape

 Oil over Acrylic on 1/2" thick wood panel, 6" square                              SOLD

Drawing of Italian Woman in a Doorway for a Softgroud Etching

This is a drawing I have never posted before. I did it quite a while ago, but
I think it is interesting because most people would wonder why it is brown, unless
they are familiar with printmaking. --  I use a wonderful softground varnish made
by Lefranc&Bourgeois called "Vernis Noir Mou", which just means "Black Soft
Varnish". It comes in a small white glass jar and you scoop some out with a palette
knife and put it in a piece of nylon stocking. -- Then you heat up your zinc or
copper plate, rub the ground over the plate; it melts and you quickly roll it out
with a soft rubber roller into a uniform coating. Once it cools down you can put
a piece of paper over it and do a drawing. The ground sticks to the paper wherever
there has been pressure from the pencil - therefor exposing the plate in those areas.
The plate is then put in nitric acid (this was a zinc plate) and "bitten" until the
image is deep enough to create a print when inked up. --  The reason this drawing
is brown is that I used tracing paper and the brown is the color of the ground that
has stuck to the paper because of the pressure of my hard pencil. Complicated,
but rewarding.

Tomatoes for Betsy

Oil on Board

Burnt Orange

                                                                        SOLD









Oil on Board                                          NFS

Carribean Memory

Oil on linen    14" X 20                                                                      Buy it Now

This is another painting done from memory. I am just as interested in the

abstract qualities of the piece as I am in trying to reproduce reality. I am

also trying to create some subtle color harmonies, which is always an

absorbing challenge.

Thanks for visiting.

Painting for Candice

                                                            SOLD









Oil on board, 7" x 9 "  NFS

Painting for Candice

Oil on board                         7" X 9"                             NFS


Memory of Chicoteague

Oil on Linen laid down on board                                                    14" x 20"

I actually started this painting several years ago as part of a series that I have

yet to complete. It was meant to be part of a triptych. It was painted mostly

from memory, so that accounts for its very simplified treatment of certain

aspects of the composition. But I like it, and it conveys, for me, what I felt

was the delicate beauty of the marshes and the sky.

Memory of Chicoteague

                    Oil on Linen laid down on board                 14" x 20"

Memory of Chincoteague