Hello world. Welcome to my art.

Summer Field ,2007, 5"x7" Acrylic on Masonite

Welcome to my first posting and my very first visit into the world of blogging. You might not find a lot of writing here (or maybe you will), but I look forward to sharing some of my work. I'm a former art teacher and a lifelong artist with a love for every type of visual expression and medium. My interests in art include painting, photography, sculpture, printmaking, pottery, and drawing. Due to the fact I haven't had a space to use as a studio for several years, I've been focusing mostly on photography and just recently I've been getting back to painting.

The paintings I've been producing are small and are explorations of one of my favorite subjects...the landscape. The small size of these paintings works well with my mode of painting which is to use a "portable studio" in my kitchen. The portable studio amounts to a used laundry basket full of jars and tubes of acrylic paint and a good set of paintbrushes. My studio can easily be transported from a corner in my office to the kitchen table where I can quickly unload all of my supplies onto the table. I usually paint at night from references, so a couple of lamps on a side table are moved closer to where they can provide me with the light I need. For a palette, I like to use disposable foam plates.

While you'll find art produced in a very traditional style here, I really enjoy abstract expressionism, cubism, and conceptual art. So, I don't feel as though I'm constrained as an artist to any one style. In fact, you'll probably see a lot of different styles emerge in this blog as well as works produced in various mediums. Yes, I plan on expanding beyond my laundry basket soon with a new studio space that will be included in a house my wife and I are building.

Until that studio space is completed, you'll find the results of my continued work with small format paintings. Most, if not all, of the paintings I'm posting now are completed in a single sitting and fall within the huge phenomenon known as "painting a day". For me, a single sitting means spending about 5 to 6 hours at the dinner table with brush in hand and paint flying. It is extremely satisfying completing a work, and the painting a day approach is great if you don't have a real studio to leave larger works in progress lying around.