Evening of Glory

 

10" x 8", acrylic on canvas board © 2023

Collection of the artist

A step outside when the sun is setting is often rewarded by a cliché. That means that you have seen them before, but sometimes it seems like the beauty gods have chosen something just for you. I becomes and piece that represents what you see at the end of the street in the "hood."

A Place Out of the Sun

11" x 14", acrylic on canvas panel, © 2023
Collection of the Artist

Returning home from central Utah, it was a hot summer's day, and to the side of the road was a respite from the heat—a hollow of sorts when the lowering sun was obscured and the blaze of the sun could still be seen.
    It was fun to paint as I recently and applied a new technique for me—using a palette knife. I had purchased a new one in a recent workshop and had used it in another painting. In this painting, like the other painting, the foliage of the trees were the issue. The knife had proved itself than and could it do it now. It did and the trees came to life in the afternoon sun.

Mountain Stream

11 x 14, Acrylic on canvas board, © 2023
Collection of the Artist

Exhibits are a source of motivation. Such is this painting of a stream in a nearby canyon. I finished it for an exhibit since I had been working on a more significant piece and did not a fresh work of art to take. 
     I had taken a photograph a couple of years ago and not its time had come to become a painting. I had seen some painting with very blue water and want to experiment with that and the composition. It made it to the exhibit and what will become of it now is for the future to determine.

 

Grace House, Good-bye

 

19" x 31.125", Acrylic on metal, © 2023

Private Collection

Sometimes you accept to do something that is unfamiliar—not painting, but the subject matter. Photographs are hard to come by except from memories, so you buy models (cars [1948 Ford 100] and a Checker) and use a poor quality Google Map, street view—I envision a driver going as fast as possible in a small town in Idaho and it's a tad blurred as a result. The people are even a problem for they lived in a time when photographs were very expensive not to take but to develop. So, you find some and make comps for reference. 

    You start thinking that you can get it finished in a month and then 18+ months later you finish it. It's not that you don't work on it as it is center-stage in the studio and you ponder the composition, the colors, and textures. Did I say the photograph was of poor quality. You use your memory of a by-gone era when there weren't garage doors in place and the siding was asphalt brick. What is enough detail and what is too much? It weighs on you and you paint it several times with varying degrees of success.

    Life happens at the same time, so you edit a book or two, paint only one other painting as you feel guilty if you don't work on THE painting, but it is always in your mind—even in Paris. You don't want to be like Leonardo and not finish commissions after you have worked out all the problems.

    So, it is finished, and you say good-bye to the Grace House and Mom and Pop out to see you off as you have so many times before. Now it is not just a memory, but an object on the wall.

A Road South

 

12x19 Acrylic on metal, © 2022

Collection of the Artist

In the fall of 2012 we travelled to New Mexico and along the way through Utah I saw this and stopped to take a photograph. It has been ten years and I decided that it was a photo that had its time. I painted it for an exhibit of the Utah Valley Artist Guild.

Rock Creek Hollow

11x22 acrylic on canvas, © 2021

Collection of the Artist

In 1856 handcart immigrants from England and Denmark left Iowa City late in the season and were caught in an early storm in Wyoming. A rescue party was sent from Salt Lake City to bring them in from the plains—it was the Willie Handcart Company. They were saved and yet pulled their handcarts to Rock Creek Hollow where the rescue party had camped in the willows against the bitter cold of the storm. That night, of being saved, my great, great grandfather froze to death and was buried the next morning with 12 other fellow travelers in a common grave laid out like spokes of a wagon wheel.

    We had a family reunion in the hollow to commemorate his death and the life of his daughter through whom most of us were descended. It was a peaceful morning, and the beauty of the location was palpable. He still lies in that common grave now marked with a brass plate telling that Ole Lykke Madsen, 41, died here. He didn't get past this place of beauty in October 1856.

North Creek Hollow: View from Mainstreet

 20x16, acrylic on linen canvas, © 2021

Collection of the Artist

When driving North down main street in Springville, look to the right as you approach 1400 N. You'll see a hollow in the mountain. This is apparent about where you see Subway on the left.  

    It's a cold day, and the clouds were down on the mountain with snow falling in spits and spirts and the clouds part and the sun hits the ridge and down in the hollow. It's beauty had to be interpreted in paint—here it is—a cold day on a Springville spring day.

Falls at Cayote Gulch

16x20 acrylic on canvas, © 2021

Collection of the Artist

My daughter's family are quite the explorers and hike to places that I may have once been able to do, but time and legs preclude. She took this photo of the falls that spoke to me in a calming way. Lovely light and gentle water falling is the best of Zen. My wife loved the turquoise water that plays off the red of the sandstone.

Fires in the West

11x14 acrylic on canvas panel, © 2020

Collection of the Artist

We drove to Tooele, Utah on a warm summer's day for a barbeque in the back yard of my wife's nephew's home by the lake. There were lots of fires in the Western United States at the time and the sky was more atmospheric than usual. I saw this scene and immediately took a picture. Time is of the essence as the conditions can change and you would not think of painting what came later. So with some cropping in PaintShop, here is my interpretation of that day and time—it became immediately one of my wife's favorite paintings and gave her peace and serenity every time she passed by it.

Lake's End

11x14 acrylic on canvas panel, © 2020

Collection of the Artist

When on an outing around the bottom of Utah Lake, you have to always be aware of what is around you as you find beauty everywhere. We lived on the prairie for 40 years, and when we returned to the mountains we came home to their comforting protection. There are those who feel that mountains are closing them in, but when you have grown up in the mountains, they feel their height and strength are liberating when you return to them.

A Trail Less Taken

11x14 acrylic on canvas panel, © 2020

Private Collection

My wife and I took to the road one afternoon on the south side of Utah Lake. A road appeared that was not used much; it circled an area that is marshy when wet. The distant mountains and the smoke in the air from fires filled the atmospheric conditions with nostalgia—a wistful feeling of wanting to see where this road (as well as the one we were on) would take us.

  Some people in their lives find that they are on a path that is not usual for the time or the group. It is a difficult road to travel, but the benefits of the trip and the glory of what awaits makes us feel that a trail less traveled is a road that is fitted to our wants and desires.

 

You Can't Go Home

11x14, acrylic on canvas panel, © 2020

Collection of the Artist

When I was a young person, I would visit a friend on his ranch in Idaho. He lived across the way from his grandfather's house, which this is. I was stricken by the beauty of the place. It seemed placid and cool. There were big cottonwood trees behind the house or to the left which shaded the yard. It had a big front yard in which a band of the Blackfoot Tribe would come and camp. On one occasion we went out to the teepees that were in the front yard, and the women took a piece of paper and drew around my brother's hands and around my feet. In about a week we went back and picked up leather gloves with a beaded gauntlet and moccasins with some beaded decoration. The gloves were well used and are gone, but the moccasins I still have in a shadow box in my studio.

    My brother and I went back to the area on a nostalgia trip and it was sad to see the house now. I realized some things are better to remember how they were and not how they are, because you can't go home and find that nothing has changed.

Here is the shadow box with the moccasins, a tomahawk (made in Japan) that I purchased at the Old Faithful Lodge in Yellowstone Park, an arrow head that my brother found, and a dream catcher made by the woman that put together the box for me. 

Along the Platte

16x10 acrylic on panel, © 2020

Collection of the Artist

One grows accustomed to the surroundings after 38 years in an area. So it is when you live in Nebraska; it has it charms—weather not being one of them. Flat land, which is what Platte references, albeit flat river. Evening has a charm of its own, and the warm tones and cool water give the nice yin-yang feel to this piece.

    I love the reflective nature of water and the movement challenges it presence to art.

Hope Over West Hills

16x20 acrylic on canvas, © 2020

Collection of the Artist

There was a heavy storm in Springville; it was dark and foreboding. There was a pandemic getting started. I had gone up the mountain and was coming down when the clouds parted and the sun broke through and everything was better. There is hope, and we can get through all of the craziness that is going on. A patch of blue and gold-lined clouds makes one think tomorrow will be better because it is good right now.

Forest Respite

 

11x14 acrylic on canvas panel, © 2020 

Collection of the Artist

Part of the process of becoming a better artist, at least historically, is to "channel" the work of a master painter—such as Albert Handell. I have studied Handell and his technique for several years and thought I would see what I could learn from emulation. It's harder than it looks to be simple.

View from the Porch

16x20 Acrylic on canvas, © 2019

Collection of the Artist

We moved to Utah after a 40-year absence. Finding a house had become a problem—the housing market was off. We found a home in Springville, Utah; across the street was a vacant lot and beyond a vacant field and the mountains seemed to surround us. In the valley from time to time was a head of about 20 deer grazing and running to and fro. 

    One morning, after a stormy night, was a beautiful sunrise, and with the wet environment it deepened the saturation of the colors. The ghost clouds were down on the mountains and beauty abounded. As I walked out to check the weather for the day, this is what I saw from the porch, so I took a picture and thought that it would make a good painting. 

    It was a couple of years later and the valley turned into a sprawling middle school and my mind thought of what used to be. So I retrieved the picture that I had taken, cropped it, drew it, and painted—a view from the front porch.

Wardsworth Trail, Hobble Creek Canyon

 

20x16 acrylic on canvas, © 2019

Collection of the Artist

I painted this painting, with permission, from a friend's FaceBook post. I thought that it was a lovely scene and that I could interpret it well. I think that I did that, and I finished the painting and entered it in an exhibit. After two months of the exhibit I went to retrieve the painting and looked at the image with horror. It had straight RED lines in the work. What were they and why did they ruin my painting? 

    Well, when I started the work, I used an "archival" India Ink marker for the "square-up" lines. They really weren't squares but they were used for the same purpose. I believed archival to mean they would be inert. Big mistake, for the "India ink" interacted with the acrylic paint and turned red.

    My intent is to take alcohol and take the acrylic paint down to the gesso and then rebuild the layers of paint—maybe, maybe not—it's been a couple of years and it still has red lines. I don't think paint on top even with gesso would work. It would not be a pleasant task, so right now it is a reminder to use pastel or graphic to square up. I can't bring myself to discard it—I really, really like it.

8-Mile Fishing Trip

21x25.75 acrylic on silk canvas, © 2019

Collection of the Artist

For several years I've been asked to paint a "family history" picture, and they may be seen as you peruse the Blog. This is the last one that was requested by my wife's sister, who passed shortly after its completion. It is a composite of an old photograph and discussions with my brother-in-law (seen behind his father) near the beaver dams along the 8-mile stream. This was a frequent location for the family to go on a fishing outing.

  As I walked the stream looking for a spot that might serve as an appropriate location, I came upon this area where I could imagine a father and son fishing—water, crystal clear and cold as it came out of the mountains above. The small black and white photo of a similar event was not  as clear or as telling as what I would wish, but I believe that the result of the interpretation of, research of place, and attire helped make it a successful painting.

 

Waiting for the Shepherd

16x20 acrylic on panel, © 2019

Private Collection

On a trip to Idaho we were on some back roads when a pastoral scene struck me. It was sheep grazing with their heads down tending to the moment. I thought of the metaphor of us who are working everyday with our heads down doing the best we can at the moment. The title came to me of waiting for the shepherd to come and take His sheep into the sheep fold for the night.

    A friend saw the painting in an exhibit and said that it reminded him of his grandfather who ran some sheep. He wanted an alteration to make it even more meaningful. So I adjusted the composition to incorporate the head of his grandfather. I drew a picture of his grandfather and made a copy of it and lifted the pigment from the paper, painted the back like you would a cartoon cell, and pasted it on the picture and integrated into the composition. I'll look for a picture of that finished piece, so check back, and I'll see if I can post that also.

Sketch of Grandpa © 2020

Private Collection

Since I addressed some of what went on to obtain the completed work, I thought I would share the drawing that I did for the finished work.

 

Inspiration of Inness

Inspired by Summer, Montclair (New Jersey Landscape) by George Inness
8x10, Acrylic on canvas panel, © 2018
Collection of the Artist

I've always admired the ethereal nature of the Tonalists and in particular George Inness, so I thought I'd like to "paint like Inness." I didn't really try to copy Inness but to channel him and to learn from the master. I once attended a workshop from a Nebraska regional artist, Judy Greff, who told me if it isn't working just, "...spatter the 'heck' out of it." I like this corollary—just glaze the "heck out of it." I think that works better for me.