Category Archives: Uncategorized

I have been consumed with creative activity vocationally. In art, not so much. The wonderful artist Sammy Peters quotes Picasso (he thinks) as saying “He believed in inspiration, but it better find you working when it comes.” I agree that prolific Artivity  lays the ground work for an occasional breakthrough. I will also say that weeks of dabbing and pulling paint around while feeling little or no connection to the work is quietly, incrimentally demoralizing. I do think that warmer weather ahead, spending time with my Fam in April, and having a couple of museum exhibits openings behind me is going turn things around.

In the between time, here is a small painting collage from February into March:

Ohne Titel, 18 X 23,” Collage and paint on panel

Between Times, something more interesting has been going on in Raul Dorn’s studio. When I left Las Cruces, I invited Raul to paint over several canvases that I just never felt were successful, and that I didn’t want to schlep across the country.

Recently, Raul said: ” I did hit on something when painting over them, as the process was stimulated by having a visual history/engagement to work with and not that intimidating void of blank canvas etc. I created about three paintings over your work, in oils, that in the end left some of your imagery peeking through. I dug what was happening and felt that the pieces deserved some “remnants” of your layered short brush strokes here and there. I actually feel that a couple of these paintings finished last Fall were some of the best paintings of the year, and I couldn’t get myself to cover 100% of the reclaimed canvases.”

Here is the paining now titled “Shaman’s Incantation:”

Here is “Adventis” (Diptych:)

I really like Raul’s results. I will observe that I think that some of my less successful paintings are too full of incident without strong graphic/iconographic forms to bind the images together. So much as I have “goals” in my work, I think that ideally paintings should “work” from thirty feet away, and offer rich incident and texture when looked at nose to surface. Raul has pulled these together in just that way. I miss visiting Raul and his small, amazing studio. Always made me want to get home and paint. That is a source of inspiration missed.

4/8/18

Note to Raul:

Rauschenberg: ” . . . the newspaper was a tool for anchoring the paintings in the everyday world outside the paintings; as he explained: “I began using newsprint in my work to activate a ground so that even the first stroke in a painting had its own unique position in a gray map of words.”

The first snow of winter is falling in Shady Side this morning. This seems an auspicious moment to share the news that my mixed-media canvas Storm, Naval Research Station has been selected for the Juried MFA Winter Member Show. I’m in good company. You may view the accepted works here: Maryland Federation of Art Juried Show

This is my first showing of new work since our move from New Mexico.

I finished working on this storm painting in April of 2017. The title references the Chesapeake Bay Detachment of the U.S.Naval Research Laboratory (USNRL).

From the USNRL site: “The Chesapeake Bay Detachment occupies a 168-acre site near Chesapeake Beach, Maryland, . . . Because of its location high above the Chesapeake Bay on the western shore, unique experiments can be performed in conjunction with the Tilghman Island site 16 km across the bay from CBD. Some of these experiments include low clutter and generally low background radar measurements. By using CBD’s support vessels, experiments are performed that involve dispensing chaff over water and radar target characterizations of aircraft and ships.”

It’s all in there, right? While witnessing a Chesapeake Bay storm in spring. Chaff over Water would make a good title!

I regularly pass the lab making the hilly drive on Maryland 261, traveling the forested “back way,” from Solomons, Maryland to the Chesapeake Beach Railway Museum.

Thank you juror Kim Banister and the Maryland Federation of Art:

 Kim Banister, Director, Julio Fine Arts Gallery

Maryland Federation of Art

To cranepaints.com

. . . probe the clouds, and thereby skew the forecast. ~24 X 36″

H says “Outlet.” OK by Me.

July in Shady Side, Maryland . . .

This painting a departs from the recent “spring time,” atmospheric Swamp-Circle-Road-Sod-Farm-all-wet-with-rain paintings. It is still a landscape of sorts. The intense greens of spring are given over to yellows and patches of mint to grey-green and buff. Summer flowers in abundance, notably the zinnias spilling over the Talavera pottery and the sunflowers coming into bloom. Painterly brush strokes dominate, belying the “indolence of summer.”

“Seasons change and so did I.” Right on Mr. Burton Cummings, right on.

Continuing with the landscape theme compelled by painting in Shady Side, Maryland. Here is the latest work in progress:

This painting is less site specific via memory than the previous two works that are redolent of the sod farm off of Swamp Circle Road, rainy days, and spring time in Maryland. Here they are:

Swamp Circle, Maryland. 20 x 20″ 2017

Detail of the new work in progress (below.) This detail is most akin to something that I’ve been holding in my mind for sometime.

If this detail was a 40 X 30″ painting, I’d be pleased. In painting terms, I’d like to capture weather phenomenon in abstract, painterly terms: From a distance, it should evoke experiences observed and felt. Close up it reads as painterly abstraction. Holy grail mindful of precedence: Turner by Joan Mitchell’s hand.

So with Land/Seascapes in mind, I have been thinking back to some of my earlier efforts.

Pinellas Point

I was about 20 years old when I painted Pinellas Point (above.) Working outside on the deck of Dad’s Studio with Tampa Bay in sight.  At the time, M.C. Richards was visiting Eckerd Collage where Dad mentored and professed. She told me that she liked this one. I was flattered, but had no idea who she was.

Summer Storm

Grantville Winter

Ramsuer, North Carolina. Zoo Days. (above.) Painted on a little table outside of the little house in Albert’s back yard. Mid-1990s.

I like that the one on the left is very free, with little reference to local (or “real”) actual colors and with completely random forms popping up. A summer painting. I never would have thought that this would become a modest touchstone for later works.

Painting on the right same rural route view in winter. Believe that it is called Grantville Winter in honor of the Hurley’s.

The painting above is called “Jetty.” Hard to believe that it was painted in New Mexico. You can’t take the Bay out of the Boy. The hooked form was routed into the scrap of Masonite that I painted on. It was a backer board used for cutting out an “X-Prize” logo for the New Mexico Museum of Space History. I hadn’t gotten around to finishing this and was embarrassed that Mom-in-Law Peggy proudly displayed it. So – I finished it for the better. I have always liked that the left half is very loose with a light touch. Tricky for me. Oh – late 2000s. If I painted/collaged something like this today here in Maryland, it would more properly be named “Rip-Rap.”

That is a brief survey. If you look, you will likely find land and sea references in abundance. Cityscapes too. But that’s another story, for we have arrived at the tail end:

Something of the feel . . .  south county, Anne Arundel, Maryland in May. Driving with the pups on a rainy day. Getting somewhere going nowhere.

Coming to grips with all of these yellow-greens and rain. Not a New Mexico scene.

. . . Adding a companion painting today. Emptying out at ground level. More roiling above. Less sunlight. This is a fairly specific scene, from memory. Different times on a favorite drive. accompanied by wagging tails.

These are relatively small – 20 X 20.” Usually tend to fill to capacity plus of late. This serves for now. Something different next time. I’ve held a Mighty Storm painting in mind for months. Seven out of nine days of (mostly) gentle rain here. This is what results.