And The Future Comes

This a new smaller painting with the title  And The Future Comes, an 8″ by 16″ canvas.  It is a continuation of my Red Roof series and is, what I think, a very strong piece.
There’s a great deal of warmth in this piece and the mosaic-like quality of the sky adds depth and vibration.  There [...]

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Railbirds

This is an old piece called Railbirds.  I’ve always liked this little painting for the clarity of color and the composition and rhythm of the figures that are seemingly  engaged in a fistfight at the rail of a horse track.  It’s also a piece that calls back parts of my youth that are distant and [...]

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Struwelpeter

This is Struwelpeter, a small painting based on the famous German children’s book from the 1800’s,  containing 10 cautionary tales.  Struwelpeter translates as Shock-headed Peter which is the story of a unkempt young boy who refuses to bathe or cut his hair or trim his nails.
He is just one of the children with offending habits [...]

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Grind

Grind.
That’s what I call this painting from a year or two back.  It’s a small, simple piece.  A little fanciful perhaps.  For me, there is something personal in the piece.
Whenever I see this piece it reminds me so much of the many jobs I had before literally falling into this career.  I remember the long [...]

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At the Movies: WW II

Some of my favorite films to have on in the studio are those that have something to do with World War II.  Not necessarily combat films, although there are a number of those that I find really engrossing, but rather films that have to do with the periphery of the war and how the world [...]

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Maxfield Parrish

Today I want to just show the influence of Maxfield Parrish on my work.  He is certainly well known for his fairy tale-like scenes of scantily-clad young women in fantastical settings but I have always loved his other, lesser known work, particularly his landscapes and homescapes.  
There’s an intensity and warmth of color that I find [...]

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Exiles: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

This painting is another of the Exiles series, its title, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,  taken from a group of Depression-era photos of sharecroppers in the American dust bowl from the camera of Walker Evans.  I have always been taken with these portraits as well of those of Dorothea Lange.  There is a sense [...]

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Get Off My Cloud

Saturday morning and I’m in the studio early, anxious to get to work.  There are things I’d like to post on my blog but I feel like there’s a painting waiting to be released.
I think that for this Saturday morning I’ll instead show a little early Rolling Stones.  At Christmas, I was talking with my [...]

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Seeking Imperfection

This is the title piece from my 2001 show at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA, titled Seeking Imperfection.  I’ve always liked the title to that show (as well as this painting) and the thought behind it  which is that everything is inherently flawed in some fashion.
 I have a belief that for every strength there [...]

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Arnold Bocklin

This is Isle of the Dead from artist Arnold Bocklin, a Symbolist painter of the late 19th century.  This was a painting that Bocklin painted in several versions and is the painting for which he is best known.
I’m showing it because it’s a piece I’ve always been drawn to and to illustrate how an artist [...]

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