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)

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.