Still Life with Cheap Wine Jug (oil on canvas, 2010)

(Private Collection)
Painted in my studio last week during and after my Thursday evening open-studio class. Years ago, when I was in college, my focus was on printmaking and in an attempt to develop my own visual language, I spent a long time focused on monotypes and etchings of groupings of non-descript bottles, pitchers, mugs, etc. and then had a wonderful teacher introduce to the work of Giorgio Morandi, who continues to be an influence. (As a sidebar, I was down in New Haven, CT last Friday at the Yale University Art Gallery and spent about 20 minutes studying one of Morandi's still-life paintings.) This sort of work always brings back fond memories of those days.

Sherman Barn on an Overcast Day (oil on canvas, 2010)

I had a day out painting with a couple of my students a few weeks ago, down in Sherman. We set up in front of this old barn but the sky was covered in a thick blanket of dense whitish-gray cloud, threatening to rain at any minute. Luckily, we were able to work for a couple of hours before it started to sprinkle. We packed up and went back to one of the women's house for a critique (and some coffee!) and, of course, by the time I left to come home, the sun was shining in a clear blue sky.

Crooked Barn (2010, oil on canvas)

(Private Collection)
I did a painting of this barn earlier in the year, based on drawings that I did on location. This small painting (10 x 20) was done on location about three weeks ago. I find the S-curve of the roof line extremely interesting, but most people, when they see the paintings of this building, have trouble believing that it's really shaped like this, but I can assure you that it is.

Tree in the Middle (oil on canvas, 2010)

(Private Collection)
This was painted outside a week ago last Friday. There once was a railway that ran through my town but the tracks were removed during the 1980's and the trail is now used for recreational vehicles. I often like to run out there and one evening, the night before I did this painting, I was on my way back from a run and I noticed what appeared to be a small structure (doghouse, maybe?)in the woods to my right. I followed an auxiliary trail in that direction to investigate. It turned out to be just an old tank, perhaps used for pesticides, that was half buried in a mound of dirt in the woods. On my way back to the main trail I saw this view.

Normally, my impulse would have been to do this as a long horizontal composition, but I didn't have any canvases in that shape so I had to use this "almost-a-square". I was trained in art school to think carefully about the compositional structure from the outset of a picture and to be sure that the composition is solid before introducing color. I usually work out the composition in washes of burnt sienna until I am happy with it, before I start mixing my colors. However, I wasn't able to get this one to work. I have been studying a lot of the abstract expressionist painters over the past few years and started thinking about their method of just going into the painting and making the composition "work" during the painting process, rather than mapping it out beforehand. I adopted this methodology while painting this picture and found it both challenging and invigorating. The bottom third of the picture presented a major compositional problem, but ultimately, by introducing a piece of the path that I was standing behind in the lower left corner and creating diagonal movement with the yellow dandelions, I was able to make the composition work in way that I was pleased with.

The Border (oil on canvas, 2010)

(Private Collection)
This is based on the view from the field behind the Dulin's old barn, looking east into New Brunswick. I did several drawings and a small oil study of this view a few years ago, with the intention of developing it into a painting, but at the time I did not have a long horizontal canvas so I ended up re-working the subject as a vertical composition. I went back up there a couple of weeks ago with my paints, but the field was being cultivated, so I did this from memory back in the studio. Working from direct observation is always educational and I find that I learn a great deal in the process, especially since the color relationships and compositional structures in nature almost always seem to be perfect. However, when working from nature, there is always the temptation to include too much descriptive information and I enjoy the challenge of working in the studio and trying to make the picture "work" in a purely abstract way.

Rusted Roof (oil on canvas 2010)

(Private Collection)
I went out Monday with a couple of students to paint and I did this small painting (10 x 12), with a couple of changes back in the studio yesterday and this morning. This old barn is on the Wiley Road and I've painted and drawn it numerous times, but never from this angle. I'm working on a pretty good sunburn on my left arm and the back of my neck and if I had any sense, I would have chosen a view that would have put me in the shade, but I like this composition. It was amazing watching the sun move as I worked. When I started mixing my colors, the little room on the left was completely in shadow and when I started packing up three and a half hours later, the entire left side of the barn was in sunlight.

We met Dale Henderson, who owns this land (He has several newer, functional potato houses just behind where I was standing.) He told us that his grandfather Tom erected this structure in 1912 and that they're going to tear it down this year (before it falls in on its own). Too bad for me, as I quite enjoy it as a subject matter. I'll have to get a few more paintings done before the demolition takes place.

Orange Truck (oil on canvas 2010)

(Private Collection)
A couple of Littleton potato barns, north of the Station Road about a mile from my house. I started this on location last Monday evening and worked on it in the studio over the next several days, with daily trips back to the location throughout the week. At first I chose to leave the truck out, but the painting wasn't working. I went back the following night to have a look and try to figure out what was wrong and I realized the I needed to put the truck in. The sky was much greener at first and the painting wasn't working at all, the green in the sky disrupting everything the picture (like a dinner guest who's had way too much to drink...). Friday night I painted the sky with a blue that was more on the violet side and the whole thing just came together.

Arledge Barn on a Spring Day (oil on canvas 2010)

(Private Collection)
I painted this on location last Tuesday. It was a beautiful day, although a bit hot. This old barn and field are part of Fred and Inez Arledge's sheep farm, just a few miles from my house, and I've drawn and painted it many times over the past few years. The geometry of the hillside and the collection of old barns continues to hold my interest. Fred and Inez are extremely nice people. A few months ago they invited us up to see the new lambs that had been born and I got to see the inside of those barns. My kids really enjoyed feeding the lambs from a bottle and picking up the chickens. One of these days I'd like to see if Fred will let me paint the inside of the barn, but my allergy to hay might make that difficult. While I was painting last Tuesday, their two big, white sheep dogs started barking at me from the top of the hill and slowly made their way down as I set up my equipment, growling and barking the entire time. Eventually the settled in at the bottom of the hill, just to the right of where the painting ends. The barking and growling was a bit of a distraction as I started to work but once I got focused, I couldn't hear it anymore. An hour or so later I noticed that the dogs were no where to be seen.

Hilltop Farm (oil on canvas 2010)

(Private Collection)
I painted this earlier today, over on the Framingham Road. Despite getting eaten alive by black flies and having a gust of wind blow my easel over, with the painting face down in the grass, knocking my table of paints and jars of solvent and oil all over the ground on the way, I was pretty happy with it.

Hole in the Sky (oil on canvas, 2010)

I finished this painting last week. It's based on some pastel drawings that I did about a week and a half ago, looking up at the front ridge here in Littleton from a field down below. I was out there this morning and everything is a vivid green, quite a difference from just ten days ago. I liked the composition, but I had a lot of trouble getting the undersides of the clouds right in the pastel because I just didn't have the right color on hand. All of my choices were either too blue or too gray. I tried blending blues and grays together, but the pastel became too dense and lost the airy quality that I wanted. I am always eager to start a painting based on a pastel drawing that I don't feel was successful, as it gives me another chance to solve the problem. When I make a pastel drawing that I'm happy with, doing a painting from it seems pointless.

Ruby in the Dust (oil on canvas, 2010)

This old shed is in back of the empty house that I did a painting of last week (see below). When I was looking at the back of the house for the other painting, this shed was on my right. I went out there on Friday and Saturday last week and did a few drawings and the worked the painting up back in the studio over the course of this past week. After many years of neglect, the shed is falling apart, I really like the way the roof line, which I'm sure was straight at one time, has taken on a prominent curve as the building has begin to sink into the ground, providing a nice compositional foil to the rectangle of the picture plane. I took some liberties with the doors - they aren't that white, since at least half of the paint has peeled off, but the painting felt better like this. I borrowed the title from a line in one of my favorite Neil Young songs.

Show at Wintergreen Arts Center

The Wintergreen Arts Center, 149 State Street in Presque Isle, ME will be hosting a show of my work in their Barresi Financial Gallery during the month of May, 2010. The public is invited to the opening reception on Saturday May 1st from 7:00pm to 9:00pm. The show will be on display until May 31st. The gallery will be open during regular Wintergreen Arts Center hours, Monday through Thursday from 2:00pm to 6:00pm, Friday 9:00am to 6:00pm and Saturday from 10:00am to 12:00pm.

In Back of an Empty House (oil on canvas, 2010)

(Private Collection)
This is the back view of an old house just north of the Houlton town line. I did a painting of the garage, viewed from the left of this painting, about a year and a half ago called "Halloween". This house has been empty and for sale since before we bought our place up here, four-and-a-half years ago, and it's really starting to fall into disrepair.
Once in a while a painting comes together fairly easily. This was not one of them. I worked on this for three weeks, returning to the subject many times, and scraping off and re-painting most of the picture two or three times. It's probably not apparent in this small jpeg (The painting itself is about 20 inches by 36 inches) but the surface shows a lot of the struggling and re-working that went into the process of creating it, which I rather like, as opposed to a slick, polished surface. Aside from appealing to me on a purely aesthetic level, I find that the "battle scars" on the painting capture the feeling of the subject matter.

House on a Hilltop (2010, oil on canvas)

(Private Collection)
I started working on this little painting last weekend while the weather was lousy. It's based on some drawings that I did back in September. This house sits all by itself on top of a steep hill on a dirt road about 2.5 miles from where I live. I had done a pastel of it that I liked except for the composition, which was a significantly taller rectangle, with a bit more sky and a lot more of the field in the foreground. It's been hanging on the wall in my studio since I did it back in September and from time to time, I would get out a sketch book and do pencil drawings, trying different compositional options, changing the shape of the rectangle, the position of the horizon and the scale of the house. Composition is very important to me, but I try to avoid the "tried-and-true" compositional cliches which, although they certainly do work (I suppose that's why they've become cliches...), tend to lack a certain spark of originality that I admire in many of my favorite artists (Rembrandt, of course, as well as Edward Hopper, Richard Diebenkorn and Andrew Wyeth always had surprisingly original compositions). Anyway, I tried this long horizontal with the size of the house diminished and it seemed to show some promise so I did this small painting.

I paint almost entirely with a palette knife, usually with the canvas lying flat on a table so that I can walk 360 degrees around it while I work, and for the past couple of years I have been consciously working on building up a very thick, painterly texture on the canvas. I have included the close up below (you should be able to enlarge it if you click on the image) to show the texture of the paint in this one, which isn't usually apparent in these small images.


I have never really liked paintings that have a slick, refined surface, where the artist almost wants the viewer to disbelieve that they are looking at paint. I've always preferred paintings where the process, the materials and the movement of the artist while they worked are very apparent.

Late Afternoon January Light (oil on canvas, 2010)

My painting process involves mixing up a palette of colors, from the three primaries and white, for each painting before I begin to actually paint. This can take anywhere from 2 to 16 hours, sometimes spread out over multiple days. I spent three days mixing colors for this painting and then my son got sick and I was confined to the house with him for four days, until I in turn got sick, a sinus infection and then bronchitis, which laid me up for almost a week (I'm still coughing, almost three weeks later...). By the time I got back out to the studio to work, all of my colors had dried up and I had to start over. The subject for this painting is the twin barns on the old Anderson farm, almost directly behind my house on the Canadian border. I painted these barns in the fall a few years ago, when the field in the foreground was filled with a bright gold canola, just about to be cut.

Looks Like It's Going to Rain (oil on canvas, 2009)

(Private Collection)
This small painting is based on a drawing I did looking west from the Wilkins Road in Monticello. back in early November (before the snow arrived) on a very cold, late autumn day. The nozzle on my can of fixative had become obstructed with gunk, so I was not able to work on the drawing as long as I would have liked (which was just as well because my fingers had become quite painfully frozen by that point), but I did, however, get to meet the farmer who owns the land as he came by on his tractor just as I was getting ready to pack up my supplies and we had a nice chat. I really liked the contrast between the oranges and browns of the recently plowed field against the deep blue of the oncoming rain.

You Can See Mars Hill from Here (oil on canvas, 2009)

I did some pastel drawings of this view looking north at the turn on the Front Ridge Road over the course of four or five days during the week before Thanksgiving. Despite the sunshine and perfectly clear skies, it was quite cold (although it has gotten much colder since), which always makes working outside with pastels a challenge. I started this painting during the week of Thanksgiving, but had to take a break from it to travel to MA for the holiday, and finished it last week.

House Where No One Lives (oil on canvas, 2009)

(Private Collection)
This old house is on the Fletcher Road in Monticello, just past the Wilkins Road and right before the border crossing into Canada. When I was kid, there was a path at the end of my street, which would take you through a big field and then about 3/4 through the woods where it came out on Stow road by an old, empty house behind trees like this. The kids in my neighborhood all called it the "Witchy-poo House" and we were terrified to go near it. Coming upon this building, at dusk, during the last week of October brought back a lot of memories from childhood Halloweens. I borrowed the title (slightly altered) from a Tom Waits song.

The Sentinels (oil on canvas, 2009)

I found this group of trees on a hillside in Monticello, south of the Wilkins Road, which is a dirt farming road that runs parallel to the Canadian border. I did two pastels of the subject, one on a very cold, overcast Sunday afternoon (Drawing with frozen fingers is never fun and I know that it's going to get much colder in the months to come...), and another, a couple of days later on a sunny day. I liked the feel of the first pastel drawing and tried to capture the coldest of the dim, late-October afternoon. Right behind where I was standing is a big tree with an enormous tractor tire wrapped around it. Apparently, the tree grew up right through the opening in the middle of the tire, which has probably been there more than 40 years.

Top of the Hill (oil on canvas, 2009)

(Private Collection)
This is a painting of the old Henderson barn at the top of a fairly steep rise on the Carson Road in Littleton. I have done several pictures looking up at this building from the bottom of the hill, at various times throughout the year. I did a lot of bike riding this past summer and my regular route took me up to the top of this hill, usually in the early afternoon, and I often thought that it would make a good subject for a painting. I did three or four drawings of on different days over the course of about two weeks before executing this painting from memory. There's an opening in the chicken-wire fence between those two posts and sometimes the sheep will wander right out into the road.

Solo Show at the Turner Memorial Library in Presque Isle

I will be having a show of some my recent work at the Mark & Emily Turner Memorial Library, 39 Second Street in Presque Isle, ME from November 7 through December 31st, The public is invited to attend the opening reception on Saturday November 7, 2009 from 3:00pm to 6:00pm.

Closed House (oil on canvas, 2009)

I finished this over two weeks ago but 9 straight days of rain and a trip to Massachusetts have kept me from photographing it until now. I did several pastel drawings of this view, looking north from the recreational vehicle trail towards where it crosses Wiley Road, in late August and September.

Of Mice and Men (2009, oil on canvas)

(Private Collection)

Forgotten Dream (pastel, 2009)

Another, more recent, drawing of the old potato house north of my studio. When I started working in pastels, about 9 years ago, I bought a large set of Rembrandt pastels, which I used for quite some time. For the past few years, however, I have been using mostly Schminke, Sennelier and Townsend pastels which I keep in various boxes in a backpack. I used my old Rembrandt set for this image, and I quite enjoyed working with them again.

Wilson's Wharf, Eastport (pastel, 2009)

(Private Collection)
This is the second drawing that I did in Eastport on Saturday on a pier behind a seafood restaurant looking out towards Lubec. There was actually a dumpster from the restaurant right behind me and I did all i could to try and ignore the odor coming from it as I worked.

Houses on Middle Street, Eastport (pastel, 2009)

I went down to Eastport this past Saturday for the annual "Paint Eastport" event, organized by the Eastport Gallery. Artists create work during the day, which coincides with the annual Salmon Festival and the Pirate Festival (The biggest challenge of the day was finding a place to park!) and the work is auctioned off at a silent auction which takes place at the Eastport Arts Center. I decided to work in pastels because they are more portable than oil paints and the lack of available parking meant that I had to walk around town looking for subject matter. This was the first drawing that I did, between about 11:00 and 1:00. There was a church to the right of the white house, which I was originally planning to focus on, but as i started to work, I became much more interested in the the Victorian house in the distance and the two STOP signs.

Red Barn Up the Road (pastel, 2009)

This old potato house is just north of my studio and I have been going out at noon time and making drawings of it.

Wiley Road Potato House II (2009, pastel)

Another drawing of the old potato house off of Wiley Road.

Wiley Road Potato House (2009, pastel)

One of several drawings of this subject that I have made over the past week or so.

Potato Field in Blossom (2009, oil on canvas)

(Private Collection)
I was happy with the pastel drawing that I did of this subject earlier this summer and wasn't planning to do a painting of it for fear that I would end up trying to just "copy" the pastel. However, after looking at the pastel for a few weeks I realized that many of the reasons that I liked the pastel had to do with the handling of the materials, and that I really didn't know how to translate that into oil paint. I found this painting particularly challenging and learned quite a bit while working on it.