Fuel Tank (pastel, 2010)

Monticello Town Line (oil on canvas, 2010)

(Private Collection)
Tuesday was a gorgeous day – clear blue skies, 72 degrees and no wind. I haven't been able to ride my bike much in the past month since we had so much rain in September. I thought Tuesday might be the last day this year that I would be able to get a nice, long bike ride in, but it was also a perfect day for painting and I didn't have time to do both since I had to be home by 2:00 when my son gets home from school. I'm glad that I decided to paint.

October Monday (oil on canvas, 2010)

I painted this on Monday. I started working on this a little before 11:00 and thought I had enough a time to do a painting before I had to meet my son Damien's bus at 2:00 but when I pulled my watch out of my pocket to check the time it was 1:50 and the painting was only about half done. Fortunately, I was was set up on a dirt tractor path, about 1/4 mile from the road, so I was able to just leave my stuff there and rush home to meet the bus. (If I'm not there when the bus arrives, they won't let him off and he'll end taking an hour-and-a-half bus ride to Houlton and then back to the school.) I got there just in time and I had Damien change into play clothes, gave him a snack and we went back to my spot so I could finish this. While I was working, Damien took a couple of my paper towels and laid them on the ground behind be, next to a mud puddle, and got himself a couple of sticks and proceeded to make a Jackson Pollack-style drip painting in mud on the paper towels. It turned out to be a good thing that I had him change his clothes, since he was covered in mud by the time we headed back to the house.

Where No Curtain Hung (oil on canvas, 2010)

(Private Collection)
This house on the Canadian border used to be really nice and I always loved the color of it. It's been vacant for over a year now, evidenced by the fact that the lawn has become a small meadow, some of the windows are broken and the arial TV antenna is hanging limply from the roof on one side. It's too bad, really. I'm not sure if the owner passed away or just moved. Maybe it's in foreclosure, but there's no sign anywhere. Anyway, the house being vacant made it easy for me to set up my easel in the driveway and do this painting. There was a strong wind blowing from the west, which was to my back, but I was able to park my van right behind me, which helped a little, although I found that I had to tie a plastic bag with a big rock in it (I always tie one to my easel to keep the canvas from acting as a sail and blowing the easel over.) to the little TV dinner table that I set my palette up on, to keep it from blowing away.