Meet the Natives

We were flipping around the dial last night and came across a show on the Travel Channel called Meet the Natives.  It was a reality show where a group of five tribesmen from the small island of Tanna in Vanuatu,  which is part of Melanesia in the western Pacific, travel to the USA to visit [...]

Read Full Post »

Time of Change

It happens every year.
There’s a period in my year where I’m sort of on hiatus from my painting.  I’m in the studio still,  doing small tasks and tidying up.  Looking at older work.  Thinking.
Thinking about what my next cycle of work will bring.  This is a natural point for me every year, when I’m sort [...]

Read Full Post »

Patriot

It’s Saturday morning and something made me think about the meaning of patriotism.  Out of the blue.  I began thinking of an old Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul song, “I Am a Patriot” and a version that he performed back in 1984.  It had a long intro that was simply put by Little [...]

Read Full Post »

Marsden Hartley

I’ve been writing lately about browsing the newspapers of the early part of the last century. That era has always held a particular attraction for me because of the energy of the wide sweeping change that was taking place across all aspects of our world.  The transition from a horse-drawn world to the automobile.  The [...]

Read Full Post »

Word of Action

It’s Thanksgiving 2009, the last one of this first decade of the new century.  It has been a decade that many would like to put well behind us.  A decade of terrorism, non-stop war and unabated greed.
But there are still reasons for giving thanks.  Friends and family and the love that is there.   The [...]

Read Full Post »

Silence Speaking

Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unshown marble of great sculpture. The silent bear no witness against themselves.
—Aldous Huxley
___________________

I’ve been scratching around in the studio for the last few days.  Straightening up a little, putting things in their places.  Taking inventory, as it were.  Seeing what materials I have on [...]

Read Full Post »

Gimme Some Duffys

I’ve written about how much I like reading old newspapers, if only to get a kick from the claims of the advertisements of the time.  One of my favorites that ran in our local papers was from Duffys Malt Whiskey, which was promoted as a tonic of sorts which built strength and fought disease.  Bronchitis, [...]

Read Full Post »

Adrift…

It’s a funny time of the year for me as an artist.  I’m at the end of a creative cycle and have a little more time at my disposal, which is nice.  Allows me to catch up with things I too long neglect or just don’t make time for normally.
But there is a part of [...]

Read Full Post »

In Our Nature

Another Sunday morning.  Hunting season here, so I listen for the inevitable gunshots that ring through the forests around my place.  Not too many.  Certainly not like it was a number of years back when it sounded like a shooting gallery on the first days of the season.  I’m not a hunter, never really have [...]

Read Full Post »

Time and Tide

I was looking for a painting in my files and came across this piece, Time and Tide, from a few years back.  It was a piece, an 18″ by 25″ image on paper, that  I well remember but had lost a few of the details in the creases of my memory.  I had forgotten how [...]

Read Full Post »