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)

Looking Up (oil on canvas, 2012)

I did a series of 6 or 7 pastel drawings from the field across the street from my neighbor's sheep farm during some very nice weather back in July. This painting was developed from my favorite elements of all of the drawings.

Hay Bales (pastel 2012)

Indian Summer (oil on canvas, 2012)

Soon I Will Be Gone (2012, oil on canvas)

(Private Collection)
This image is based on an empty house about a mile and a half up the road from where I live. I was working on this last winter just before my exhibition at the University of Maine; it was actually still wet when I delivered it to the gallery to be hung. I had originally painted the sky a pale yellow color as I was trying to intentionally flatten the space, give it an overall warm tonality, and consciously avoid the impulse to automatically paint the sky blue. When I got the painting back to my studio, however, I was bothered by the feeling that something wasn't right about it. My first feeling was that the windows were too dark and I kept looking at it and thinking that they seemed too dark in the context of the painting, but they really weren't painted very dark at all. I did a series of pastel color studies and eventually decided to repaint the sky with a darker and cooler color, which really helped to create a sense of eerie light on the face of the house and made the windows recede back into the space, lightening their value by comparison to the sky. The title is lifted from one of my favorite Free songs and is a reference to the phenomenon that a lot of the old, empty buildings around here that I've used as subjects for my drawings and paintings over the past six years are no longer standing.

Quiet Side (2012, oil on canvas)

This big painting (34 x 40) is based on a drawing that I did last summer on Mount Desert Island. This was one of those paintings that took a very long time to bring to completion. I worked on it, off and on, for months, continually adjusting the colors of the trees, sky, road and houses, without referring back to the original drawing but focusing instead on the internal relationships of the painting itself. The painting has quite a dense surface, from the many layers of paint build up. I brought it up to the University of Maine in Presque Isle for an exhibition of my work back in February, mostly just to get it out of the studio so I'd stop messing with it. Of course, after I'd left it there, I kept having these compulsions to get it back so I could work on it some more. However, once the show was hung and I was able to see it in the Reed Gallery at the University, which is a very large room that allowed me to see the painting from a much greater distance than my studio space allows, an important consideration for a painting this size, I was happy with it. I really like the contradiction between the sense of space receding into the image caused by the use of perspective and the insistence on the surface of the canvas by the build up of thick, textural paint.

Lunch Hour (pastel, 2012)

These are the three barns behind the old, empty house on the Framingham Road where I have been spending a lot of time drawing over the past few months. This was done mid-day late last week from the north side, right behind the house. I only had about 20 minutes to work on it because I had to get home to meet my son's school bus and I wasn't completely happy with it when I got it back to the studio. I hung it up on the wall (with a bunch of other drawings that I'm not completely satisfied with) and have been studying it all week. I found the problem was that the grass was a bit too green and the roof tops too purple and they were fighting with each other. I took some light yellow ochre and scumbled over the grass and the roof tops and it all came together.

Garage in the Woods (pastel, 2012)

I've often noticed this garage at the edge of the woods beyond a big meadow behind the Littleton potato house. You can just barely make it out from the old railroad trail that runs between the Station Road and Wiley Road. I was out walking around with my backpack full of pastels a couple of weeks ago and decided to trudge through the 1/4 mile or so of brambles and thorns (and hidden streams!) in order to get a closer look. I'd love to know what the story is with this structure as there is no path or road leading up to it from anywhere. Maybe there was a house there once that burned down and then the trees just grew up around the garage. There's an old camper parked about 30 feet to the right of it, obscured by the trees from where I was standing. Anyway, this odd little structure surrounded by dense forest and set back from me by an overgrown meadow made for an interesting subject for a drawing.

Three of a Kind (oil on canvas, 2012)

(Private Collection)
There's a great line in one of my favorite David Lynch movies, "Lost Highway", spoken by Bill Pulman's character when he says, "I like to remember things my own way...the way I remember them, not necessarily the way they happened." I do a great deal of paintings based on memory. Sometimes I will come back to my studio with a very loose, gestural sketch which I will develop into a painting based on my memory of looking at the subject. Also, I find that even when I am looking directly at a subject and working, memories, especially from my childhood, will enter into the image. A scene will remind me of a place or time from when I was young and I will, through choices of color, composition, etc., paint the scene to look like my memory rather than an objective representation of the subject. This painting was done in my studio based on a sketch that I did last summer of these old barns near the Wiley Road here in Littleton, which I have drawn many times over the past few years.

Framingham Road (oil on canvas, 2012)

(Private Collection)
I painted this canvas from a view of the Framingham Road here in Littleton on Sunday afternoon (which was bitterly cold and windy) for the upcoming 10x10 auction at the Wintergreen Art Center in Presque Isle. The three barns in the previous two pictures are behind this house and were to my left as I worked on this. This painting, along with 10" x 10" paintings by 50 or so other artists will be auctioned off this coming Friday at the Wintergreen Art Center between 6:00 and 8:30. More info here.

A Certain Unease in the Air (pastel, 2012)

Same barns as the previous painting, this was done about three weeks ago, during a brief warm spell when most of the snow had melted.

Three's a Crowd (oil on canvas, 2012)

This was painted in February. These three barns sit behind an old, empty house on the Framingham Road here in Littleton and I have been spending a lot of time over the past five or six months up there making drawings based on the various buildings on the property. I did quite a few drawings and paintings of this property from the other (north) side during the first year that I lived here, but at the time, the house was occupied and I didn't feel comfortable roaming around the property with my easel. The house has been empty for a few years now and there was a For Sale sign in front of it last fall.

Purple Shutters (oil on canvas, 2011)

(Private Collection)
This is a painting of an old house up on the Front Ridge here in Littleton. There's quite a steep hill behind the house, but from in front, you can look out over the trees well into Canada. I did several drawings of this house over the summer at different times of days and in different weather conditions (On one particularly windy day, a gust came up from over the crest of the hill behind me and sent my drawing board tumbling through the yard.) and the painting ended up being a composite of my favorite parts of each drawing. I've always loved that Adirondack chair sitting on the porch facing a million dollar view, just waiting for someone to come along and enjoy it. Sometimes it feels like there's a ghost sitting in that chair, surveying the landscape down the hill and remembering when the house was in better shape.

Quintet (oil on canvas, 2011)

The Old Timer (pastel, 2011)

(Private Collection)
I realize that I haven't been very diligent about posting images here lately. It's not because I haven't been busy working; on the contrary, I've been too busy working to keep up with photographing everything and posting it here. This is one of three drawings that I did of an old potato house, which looks as though it hasn't been in use for quite some time, on a farm in Presque Isle back in August. I had to walk quite a way from my car, through potato fields and woods, to get to this building, at least two miles, probably more. I always enjoy finding these subjects this way, after a long walk into unknown territory, rather than simply driving up to something with my car and I like to think that, somehow, the experience of the journey there ends up in the final artwork.

View From Keirstead Farm (2011, oil on canvas)

(Private Collection)
I made four or five trips up to the Keirstead's potato farm in Presque Isle back in July, where I roamed around their 1200 acres of fields and woods with my back pack full of pastels, making two or three pastel drawings on each trip. I then spent most of the month of August working on this large painting which is based on three different drawings from the same view, looking south with the twin peaks of Quoggy Jo mountain in the distance, beyond the city of Presque Isle. On the first day that I was up there drawing, there was a big barn over towards the left. In fact, the first drawing that I did was of that barn, from much closer. When I returned for the second time, the barn was gone. Apparently, it got taken down by one of the severe wind storms that we had up here this past summer.

Road to Bernard II (pastel on paper, 2011)

I did a small pastel drawing of this subject on location while in Southwest Harbor back in late June. I recently did this bigger version here in my studio and I've recently begun a large painting based on the same subject.

Presque Isle from Quoggy Joe North Peak (pastel on paper, 2011)

(Private Collection)
This pastel drawing was also done for the Paint Presque Isle event at the end of August (see previous post). Quoggy Joe is a twin peaked mountain in Aroostook State Park. There are trails to both the north and south peaks from the parking lot, as well a trail that runs across the top, connecting both peaks, I hiked up the north peak trail with pastel gear and made this drawing looking out north towards the city of Presque Isle with the road leading into the park visible in the lower right corner. It was a bit of a challenge hiking up with all of my gear, but it was certainly more difficult coming back down while trying to protect the drawing from getting scratched by the multitude of branches that line the trail on both sides.

Houses on Chapman Street (oil on canvas, 2011)

(Private Collection)
This was painted for the annual "Paint Presque Isle" event sponsored by the Aroostook Partners for the Arts. Artists create work in the city of Presque isle during the day and then the work is auctioned off in the evening to raise money for arts programs in local schools. I parked my car behind Maine Street, on the river side, and wandered around until I found this row of houses on Chapman Street, just behind the courthouse. At one point about half way throught the painting process, I gust of wind knocked my easel over and the painting landed face down in the gravel on the side of the road and I had to scrape the whole thing down and start over, which actually turned out to be a good thing as I think that having to repaint it improved the painting.

Sand Beach Seaweed (pastel on paper, 2011)

While on vacation on Mount Desert Island my wife and kids and I went to Sand Beach one afternoon. I brought my pastels along and spent the entire time drawing. I did a view looking out over the water, but I'm not really happy with it and probably won't post it here. I think it's just too "picture postcard" for my taste. But the dunes in back of the beach with the seaweed on the ground and heavy clouds moving in – this I like.

Road to Bernard (pastel on paper, 2011)

This drawing was done while on vacation in Southwest Harbor from a little bridge on the road that leads to the small town of Bernard on the quite side of the Mount Desert Island. To my left as I was working was a little inlet with boats visible in the distance but those types of postcard-like views really don't interest me at all. A woman actually pulled over and got out of her car and said that she had to see what I could possibly be drawing since I wasn't looking out towards the water at "that beautiful view". A policeman pulled up behind me at one point also, and parked right in front of that big pole on the left, obstructing my view for about 10 minutes. I was expecting him to get out and ask me questions about what I was doing, but he eventually just drove away. I'm no sure if he even realized that he was blocking my view.

Cable Crossing (pastel on paper, 2011)

This was done early one morning while on vacation in Southwest Harbor. I wandered down a road called "Cable Crossing" which led from the Seawall Road to the water. It looks like the place where the power cables go under water out to the Cranberry Islands. This was a view looking to my left back towards Southwest Harbor. There are broken mussel shells everywhere on the shore and they give an interesting iridescent shine that contrasts with the dark brown rocks along the seawall.

The Narrows from Valley Peak (oil on canvas, 2011)

I hiked up Valley Peak mountain on Mount Desert Island with my painting gear to do this one. No small task, climbing a steep, rocky trail with a 40lb. backpack, a portable easel, a canvas, an 18" x 24" piece of masonite that I use for a palette and a folding table to rest the palette on. Top add to the fun, I gashed open my left leg on rugged shrub near the top and was bleeding all over the place while I painted this and was continually harassed by a hornet. Nonetheless, I found a nice view of The Narrows at the mouth of Sommes Sound out on a rocky ledge. The biggest challenge of all turned out to be getting the wet painting back down the mountain without smudging it too much.

From Manset Town Landing (oil on canvas, 2011)

(Private Collection)
This was painted from the town landing in Manset, looking out at the moorings in Southwest Harbor.

Seawall Grill (pastel on paper, 2011)

(Private Collection)
This was done from the Seawall picnic area near Southwest Harbor late one afternoon. I wandered around the rocks for quite a while with my heavy backpack full of pastels looking for an interesting composition before I found this rusty old camp grill which I immediately fell in love with.