This Too Shall Pass (oil on canvas, 2014)

All good things come to an end. And, fortunately, so do all bad things.

This image is based on the old Henderson barn on the Wiley Road that has been the subject of many, many paintings and drawings of mine over the years, although I had yet do make a successful image of the structure from this angle. I often run by this building and the idea for this painting came to me on the fourth of July whilst running in the rain. I don't enjoy running in the rain, but I do it anyway, for the feeling that I get when I return home, to a dry, warm house, knowing that I was able to push myself to get through a difficult, uncomfortable and unpleasant struggle - not unlike making a painting (although, I must say, running ten miles in the rain is a lot easier than making a painting!)

I like greys that have a bit of colour in them, especially purplish greys and green greys, and I wanted this painting to be about the relationship between those two types of colors. And, of course, there was no way that orange was going to let purple and green have all the fun without him so he crashed the party. I like the telephone pole because it reminds me of a cross.

Beautiful on the Outside (oil on canvas, 2014)

I never work from photographs, but I often do a lot of drawing prior to making an oil painting. I usually work in pastels when drawing, but sometimes I'll do black and white drawings in either charcoal or pencil and then work up a color painting in the studio. I like working this way because it frees me (or forces me) to make more subjective color choices, with the colors being chosen for their contribution to image rather than for their ability to "describe" the original subject, something that doesn't interest me at all.The sky was myriad shades of blue, from deep ultramarine to teal, in all of the preparatory studies that I did for this image, but when it came time to do the actual painting, this happened. I think it's important when working to allow the emerging image to direct the activity rather than imposing my preconceptions on the work. I want my paintings to surprise the viewer, to show them something that they've never seen before. I like to be surprised myself, as well.

The Best is Yet to Come (oil on canvas, 2014)

This was based on a pastel drawing that I did out on the Foxcroft Road a couple of years ago. I neglected to photograph the drawing before it was framed under glass, so there's no image of it here, but the original image was a square, with this composition being based on the top half of it only. I like the original drawing, but I think the reading of the various forms across the horizontal format is more effective. I tend to be of a dark, brooding nature but this is a painting full of optimism.

Five Months of Winter (oil on canvas, 2014)

I confess - I've been terrible at keeping up with my blog, but I have been working a lot since April. I was tied up during most of the summer with a bathroom remodeling project that turned into a nightmare, replete with horsehair plaster, asbestos, formaldehyde, rough-hewn-oddly-spaced wall supports, ungrounded wiring and a host of other interesting and exciting obstacles which I won't recount here. Add to that a plague of computer issues which lead to my Mac ultimately giving up the ghost, and the result is a sadly neglected blog.
This was painted in late March, at the tail end of the longest, coldest, snowiest winter I've ever lived through. I've been running by this menacing, anthropomorhic tree, with its flailing limbs, at the end of the Hamilton's driveway on the Framingham Road, for years and have always wanted to paint it. I like to think that the warm colors are creeping in and displacing the cold ones.

A Little Bit Older and a Little Bit Wiser(oil on canvas, 2014)

A student brought a notecard with a reproduction of a painting on it to class last week and wanted me to look at it and tell her why she found the image so appealing. It was a nice painting, of a New England farmhouse and some barns in winter, with a strong "rule of thirds" composition, painted in a loose, semi-impressionistic style with local colors (red barn, blue sky, etc.) accentuated with pretty, more subjective pastel colors. The drawing was accurate and the whole thing was executed with skill and aplomb. In the end, we concluded that all of these things contributed to the image's appeal, yet I found it ripe with clichés and devoid of originality. This lead to a discussion about "expectations". The image that we were discussing was clearly painted in such a way so as to meet the expectations of a broad-based buying public. No harm there - we all want to make a living. However, I believe that art has a responsibility to not meet our expectations, but to challenge them. Not to make us feel intelligent, but to make us question what we know and believe. To broaden our horizons - intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. To surprise us. To stir us up. To grab us by the shirt collar and say "Look here! Here's something you've never seen before!" I know. I know. Most people don't care about such things. They just want a painting that matches their sofa or reminds them of the place that they visited on vacation or reminds them of a famous artist who's work they can't afford. But there are people who care about experiencing something new. I know, because I'm one of them.

Anyway, this is the old Henderson potato house once again, this time in warm reds, yellows and oranges, with some purples and teals and greys thrown in....for anyone who cares.

Something to Look Forward To... (oil on canvas, 2014)

I was out riding my bike three years ago in the midst of the summer and as I went by this field right on the Canadian border, I saw this old potato truck parked way off in the distance near the woods and I really liked the way the late afternoon sun was hitting the barn. I was only about 4 miles from my house, the very early stage of what was meant to be a 30 mile ride, but when the muse beckons, one must heed her call. And so I did. I turned around and went home, changed into painting clothes, loaded my pastels into the car and headed back over to do a drawing. Unfortunately, the resulting drawing was lackluster at best. To be honest, I was disappointed that I'd given up what promised to be a much needed, stress-relieving bike ride in exchange for a mediocre drawing. So I hung the drawing on my studio wall and, over the ensuing weeks (months, really) I pondered it and tried to figure out what it lacked. I assumed it was the composition (The original drawing was much closer to a square in shape, with a lot more sky at the top and more foreground at the bottom.) so I cut some strips of paper and would tape them to the wall, covering up different sections of the drawing and changing the shape of the image, in the hopes that I would find a better composition. I cropped the bottom, the top, the left side, the right side but to no avail. Eventually I settled on this long horizontal, but the image still lacked something, so I left it there on the wall.

For three years.

Lately I've been focusing on using much more subjective color in my paintings - trying to find unique color harmonies specific to each painting and to whatever mood I'm trying to convey. In the original drawing, the sky was blue, the grass was green and the truck was red. I've been holed up in the studio this winter, thanks to single digit or sub-zero temperatures almost every day since early December, so one evening I began experimenting with some small-scale color studies based on this composition and came up with something similar to this which I thought was worth pursuing as a painting. So, in the end, I'm glad I skipped the bike ride that evening as I rather like this image. And when someone asks me how long it took me to paint this (It's remarkable how often I get asked that question) my answer will be "three years".

My initial impulse was to title it "Green Truck"... but I already used that title a long time ago.

The First Link of One Memorable Day (oil on canvas, 2014)

(Private Collection)
Over the past year-and-a-half, the focus of my work has been on subjective color or, for those of you that didn't go to art school, color choices that have little or nothing to do with the actual colors of the subject, but, instead, are chosen for their relationships with each other within the context of the painting and, also, to evoke a certain emotional response in the viewer. As a result, I've spent a lot of time painting familiar subjects, but with completely different color combinations. This is the old potato house on the Wiley Road that I've drawn and painted more times than I care to think about over the past eight years (This composition is based on a drawing that I did just before the approach of sunset last June as the black flies tore the flesh off of my legs and face!).
I'm interested in finding color combinations that work together, that trigger some kind of emotional response, and (and this is sacrosanct) don't look like anything that I've ever seen before. I like to think of the color combinations as big jazz chords, with lots of extensions, overtones and compound intervals, where a particular combination of notes, using a certain hierarchy and within the context of the rest of the composition, can create a completely unique sound. So I try to find combinations like this, where one color may be dominant and other colors may harmonize with it whilst others create tensions. The triad of secondary colors - orange, green and violet - has always been a favorite of mine and I find that by adjusting the tonality of each color (i.e. an orange can be closer to yellow or red and can be pure and saturated or dull and muted), there is an infinite wealth of possibilities within a seemingly limited range of colors. I like how the salmon-ish orange color works with the various greens and muted violets in this painting and creates a warmth and feeling of nostalgia, in a primarily abstract way that has very little to do with what the actual barn looks like.

All That Beauty and Angst (oil on canvas, 2014)

There's something about an old, derelict house or barn being swallowed up by the landscape that I love. I think it's the idea that everything eventually dies and rots, falls to pieces, and yet life itself carries on. A tree rises up out of the ground from a fallen seed, and grows to towering heights and then one day, topples to the ground, to be consumed by insects. Mankind erects massive structures, built to last, and yet they eventually crumble to dust. And we build lives for ourselves, amassing family and friends and material possessions only to one day be nothing but dust. But the cycle of life itself, goes on and on, generation after generation. I had a profound experience once, years ago, whilst out running on some old, long-disused railroad tracks. My shoe had come untied, so I stopped running and as I bent down to re-tie the lace, I noticed how the once seemingly-indestructible steel track had completely rusted and become thin and brittle, so much so that I could break a piece of it off with my fingers. Right next to it, a plant was beginning to bud and I saw the truth in that - how time moves on and nothing lasts forever, yet the cycle keeps perpetuating. This image is based on a pastel drawing that I did on Easter Sunday last year, whilst a few stalwart patches of snow were still holding out against the onslaught of spring, of an abandoned house on the corner of the Wiley Road and Hammond Lane here in Littleton.

Dawn Light Kisses the Pale Morning Snow (oil on canvas, 2014)

Contrary to what I wrote in my previous post, some paintings, like this one, which was painted in a single day, do come to fruition without a lot of agony. This image is based on the view of the Dulin's barn from the field behind it, a subject that I have been using quite a bit over the past year, as I've explored different color schemes. The sky here in northern Maine takes on an intense pink color in the early hours, especially on extremely cold days (which we've had a lot of this winter). Someone told me that it has to do with the water molecules in the air being frozen so that they refract the light. Whatever the scientific explanation, it's quite breathtaking to behold and this is not the first time that I've done a winter painting with a pink sky. I had been looking at the snow a lot (not that I've had much choice!) and thinking about the fact that the color White is a combination of all of the colors in the visible spectrum and how I can see colors in the snow when I really study it.The idea here was to paint the snow in such a way that it looks white, but that it is actually made up of many colors. I'm not sure how it comes across in this image (and that may be largely dependent on the device that you are viewing it on), but in person the bottom two thirds of this painting remind me of the iridescence of abalone. And, of course, some teals and purples in the trees, for good measure.

Reading Between the Lines (oil on canvas, 2014)

People often ask me how long it takes me to make a painting. This is a difficult question to answer because every painting is different and my process involves a lot exploration, serendipity and never knowing what the painting will look like until it is finished. In addition, many paintings begin with a series of exploratory drawings and studies as I fumble around in the dark trying to get closer to the illusive image. Sometimes these preliminary drawings will emerge in a burst of creativity over a very short span of time but, more often than not, the drawings will come over a span of several days, weeks or even months. Occasionally, albeit rarely, in image comes very quickly, almost effortlessly and an image will go from initial inspiration to finished painting in a single day. And sometimes, I'll labor over an image for months, working on it for a few days, then getting away from it for a while, coming back to it again, getting away from it again. During this time I usually find myself trying to reconcile any expectations that I might have had with whatever the image is trying to be, which is antithetical to whatever I thought I was going to do. I suppose it's like having a bright child and expecting them to go to college, medical school and on to a successful career and life of luxury and then having to deal with their decision to become an artist. This was one of those paintings. This is actually the second painting that I've done of this subject, based on a pastel drawing done on location in the late Autumn of 2012. I began this painting in early November of last year, naively thinking I could finish it in a couple of days, in time to take it with me on my trip to Erie, PA. Hah! This was not to be. I struggled with this painting through the holidays and most of the month of January. Ultimately, it ended up being a painting on which the paint was applied over and over and over, layer upon layer, creating a density and impasto surface that turned out to be exactly what the painting needed, regardless of whatever I had intended.

A Voice From the Past (oil on canvas, 2013)

(Private Collection)
Back view of the old McBride homestead. The tall pine tree and porch on the right also appear in the last painting that I posted and I've painted and drawn several views of this subject over the past two years. This house has been vacant for a long time, but I've always been drawn to it and am interested in learning its history. Buildings have their own stories.....and scars and memories.....and ghosts. I recently travelled to Erie, PA for a show of my work at the Kada Gallery, with this painting, still quite wet, in the back seat of my rental car. The rental car, fortunately, was upgraded to an small SUV, which turned out to be a very good stroke of luck because I never would have fit this wet canvas, along with thirteen other paintings, three suitcases (I overpacked a bit!), my backpack full of pastels (which I never got to use because it snowed during the three days that I was in Erie) and my coffee beans and brewing equipment (which I never leave home without!) in the car that I had reserved. Whilst stopping at my parents house in MA, I found an old monotype that I had done in college and wanted to take it home with me. I put it in the back seat, behind this wet painting, which turned out to be a very bad idea because at the stop sign at the bottom of the steep hill that my parents live on, the monotype, framed under glass and quite heavy, leaned forward, pushing the wet painting onto the backs of the car seats! No damage to the painting, but enough of that yellow-green (cadmium, no less!) on the fabric of the seats to cause me quite a bit of stress! But, thanks to a bottle of "Totally Awesome" all purpose cleaner (an indispensable product in any artist's studio)and a rag, I was able to remove all of the paint from the seats and be on my way, leaving the framed monotype at my parents' house.

Sometimes There Are No Words (oil on canvas, 2013)

(Private Collection)

Wistful Thinking (oil on canvas, 2013)

I recently acquired a new color - Quinacridone Violet - which is quickly becoming a favorite. A deep, red-violet that is wonderful on its own or in mixtures with other colors. It insisted on being included in this painting of the old tractor shed on the Framingham Road, about a mile and a half directly behind my house, as the crow flies. A difficult walk, through overgrown fields and dense woods, across an icy stream that can't be forded without getting your shoes wet, and with a high probability of an encounter with a black bear. Or, a two-and-a-half mile drive by car, which is how I get there. At first, the yellow-greens and oranges didn't want to share the space with the Quinacridone Violet at all. But, after considerable effort on my part, combined with a good deal of diplomacy (I convinced the yellow-green and orange that they could dominate the coveted foreground - although unbeknownst to them, there's a good deal of Quinacridone Violet mixed in all over the foreground!) everyone ended up getting along nicely. Be sure to click on the image to see a bigger version, which shows some of the paint textures.

Not Alone (pastel on paper, 2013)

Thirteen Days Until August (oil on canvas, 2013)

(Private Collection)
This was one of those paintings that didn't come together very quickly. One of the first steps in my painting process is mixing up a palette of colors for that specific painting. Sometimes, I will do several small color studies, trying out different combinations, either in pastel or oil on paper. I like to think of the colors as characters in a drama. Some of the colors are the main characters and some are secondary, supporting characters. Sometimes the story is about a single color and often it is about some kind of drama between two colors: a love story about two colors who meet and discover that they were meant to be together or, perhaps it's a story about two colors who don't get alone, the hero and the villain, protagonist and antagonist. Usually, the story gets worked out on the canvas as I work, but I'll usually have a general idea of which direction I'm going in. Some colors get casts in the initial stage and then get cut as the painting progresses and some morph from one color into another, depending on the needs of the picture. In this case, I began by thinking about the red violet and the yellow green - two complimentary colors on the cusp of being warm or cool. I did several pastel sketches in which sometimes the yellow green was dominant and sometimes the red violet was dominant. Sometimes the colors were very saturated and intense, and sometimes they were dull and muted. In some versions the sky was a dark and very strong pink and sometimes it was almost white, with a barely discernible hint of color. When I mixed my paints and started the painting, I felt that the challenge was to get the red violets and greens to get along, which they didn't want to do. I worked on this for many days. My colors dried up and I had to mix new ones and there was a great deal of frustration, punctuated with long periods of just staring at the image and contemplating it. Then one day, this orange showed up, uninvited. I'm not sure where it came from, but it made it's way into the grass on the right at first and then into the sky and the trees and suddenly, everything worked. A color that was related to the other two, and could help them get along with one another.

The subject is the group of structures on the Framingham Road, which, along with the house on the same property, have been a particularly fertile subject for many drawings and paintings over the past two years. The biggest barn on the left suffered some severe damage last week. I went by it on my bicycle two days ago and the entire right side of the building has collapsed and is about to topple onto the smaller shed in the middle. It may continue to provide interest as a subject.

Living the Poem (oil on canvas, 2013)

(Collection of the Artist)
I've been thinking a lot lately about the color green and how it's the most difficult color to work with. Here in northern Maine, the Spring is filled with myriad greens but I've always found it challenging to capture that "greenness" in an oil painting. The tendency is for the greens to either be too saturated (i.e. too green) or not green enough. I've been looking through my dozens of art books over the past few months and it seems that most of my favorite artists, with the exception of Cezanne and contemporary painter Stuart Shils, avoided making paintings with an overall green tonality. I did some initial color studies for this painting and it was originally going to be in a yellow and orange key, but somehow during the process of painting it, the greens crept in and I found myself up to the challenge. And it was a challenge, especially getting the colors of the barn, which, although not green, hold the entire painting together, just right. After three days of continually mixing colors, painting, scraping off and repeating, I am happy with the result.

October is My Favorite Month (oil on canvas, 2013)

(Private Collection)

Echoes of Songs from Ancient Harvest Days (oil on canvas, 2013)

(Private Collection)
Inspired by the view of the old barn behind the Dulin's house, as seen from across the potato field in the fall. I have been doing a variety of color studies based on this motif for the past few weeks.

House of Blue (2013, oil on canvas)

Breathing the Same Air (oil on canvas, 2013)

I was looking through an old sketchbook and came across a pencil drawing that I had done about ten years ago of these two old mailboxes on the O;d Upton Road near where I used to live in Grafton, MA. I thought that it would make a nice subject for a painting, especially since the drawing didn't have any color in it, thereby allowing me to experiment with some subjective coloring. However, I only had one canvas on hand, a 20" x 36" that it didn't look like it was the right proportions for the drawing. I measured the drawing in my sketchbook to see what the proportions were and the drawing was 5" x 9" – exactly the same proportions as my canvas. So, I took this as a sign that I should proceed with the painting.

Waiting for Spring (oil on canvas, 2013)

Many years ago I simplified my process by reducing my palette down to just the three primary colors, yellow, red and blue, plus white and mixing all of my colors from there. This process made a lot of sense to me ten years ago and it's helped me to learn a lot about color but lately I've been introducing some new colors into my palette, like the Ultramarine and Manganese blues in this painting.

Smells Like Halloween (oil on canvas, 2013)

I worked on a version of this painting during the early months of last year, but I was never satisfied with it. It was leaning against the wall in my studio for ten months while I tried to figure out what was wrong with it. In the end, I decided to push the house back further, by making it smaller, which worked out much better. The other version had three trees in the foreground, as well, but it works better with just two. I pulled the old painting off of the stretcher bars and stretched a new canvas for this one – a year after I originally began working on this image. Some images come together quickly, but sometimes the process can be really drawn out and I'm beginning to learn to just be patient and let the images come when they are ready.

Seen Better Days (oil on canvas, 2013)

Still Nobody Home (oil on canvas, 2012)

I've spent a lot of time this year drawing this old, empty house and the three barns next to it up on the ridge on the Framingham Road, right near the Canadian border. I've drawn it so many times, in fact, that I could probably draw it blindfolded! The house has been vacant for a long time, but there were some people living in it a couple of years ago, squatters or illegal aliens, I suppose. It's sealed up now and the electricity has been disconnected. It's falling into squalor, which is a shame because it's in a prime location with potato fields on both sides and behind it, with a copse of trees in back to the right and across the street is a spectacular view over the Meduxnekeag River valley and New Brunswick beyond. Anyway, it's been a very fertile subject matter and has given me a wealth of shape and color relationships from which to mine images and I'm sure that I will continue to make the most of it for some time to come.

Cat o' Nine Tails (pastel, 2012)

This is a view looking to the west of the old railroad trail that runs from Houlton to Fort Kent, about a quarter mile south of where it crosses the Carmichael Road. I run by here all the time and I've always wanted to draw this view looking through the trees and across the field towards the blue house in the distance. At this time of year, it reminds me of the artwork on the cover of the first Black Sabbath album and I sometimes half expect to see a green woman in a long, black cloak looking at me through the trees.

October Woods (pastel, 2012)

I know that a lot of people in New England love the colors of the foliage in the fall, as do I, but I also love the colors at this time of year when all of the leaves have fallen to the ground and the forests all become a mixture of purplish-browns and orange-browns, punctuated by the warm greens of grass and the cool greens of the pine trees.

Age, Squalor and Dilapidation (oil on canvas, 2012)

(Private Collection)
Another variation on the old Wiley Road potato house (see below), this time in purples and pinks.

Dark Forest (pastel, 2012)

I found a new trail/farm road behind my house, right on the Canadian border and I went exploring there a couple of weeks ago with my son and my pastel gear. I was quite intrigued by this mysterious, dark forest at the far side of a recently mowed hay field with the young pines, basking in the sun to the left providing a stark contrast to the impenetrable, almost black forest in the distance.

Green Manalishi (oil on canvas, 2012)

(Private Collection)
The old, closed up potato house on the Wiley Road, that I've made numerous drawings and paintings of, from just about every possible view, over the past 5 years. It offers a great combination of geometry and wild organic growth and catches the light in marvelous ways throughout the day. I'm much more interested in creating images that communicate personal, emotional ideas through combinations of colors, shapes and textures than I am in merely describing what things look like and I find that once I've drawn or painted a particular subject several times it becomes a lot easier to transcend objective description and focus on the elements that are most important to me.

Impressionist Barns (pastel, 2012)