Memory drawing is one of the best ways to build observational skills, and with a little practice can be an enjoyable addition to an artist's tool set.

A quick example of how I teach idea generation through storyboard-style compositions in a recent drawing class, with work by one of my drawing students.

These past two weeks I took a trip to Europe, and had a chance to visit a number of museums and galleries in Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam. These included the Brussels Royal Museums (Old Masters Museum and Fin de Siècle Museum), the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, the Rembrandt House in Amsterdam, the Louvre and Musée D'Orsay in Paris, as well as Galerie L'Oeil de Prince, a contemporary figurative painting gallery in Paris, and Galerie J. Kugel, a gallery of antiquities in Paris. It was a time of fruitful study in addition to a vacation, and I learned quite a bit by examining many original artworks by a great variety of masters. 

A recent Still Life painting of White Carnations and Baby's Breath, oil on linen mounted on panel. Shown after completing the first of two sittings on this piece. It is available and will be listed on my site shortly.

Detail "Addison Farms Vineyard", oil on hand-prepared panel, August 2016

Springfield Museums, Springfield, Massachusetts

The Wonder Cabinet - Part 1

What a beautiful facade! It must be Italy? No, it's Massachusetts! The Italian Palazzo-styled architectural facade of the George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum in Springfield, Massachusetts, to be exact, one of my new favorite small museum finds in the US. 

"The poetic quality is not obtained by eschewing any truths of fact or of nature... Poetry is the vision of reality." - George Inness

"Virginia Sunset", George Inness, 1889.

"It does good also to take walks out of doors, that our spirits may be raised and refreshed by the open air and fresh breeze: sometimes we gain strength by driving in a carriage, by travel, by change of air, or by social meals and a more generous allowance of wine.” 
― Seneca

Hello there, hope you're doing well and Happy Holidays! Given the craziness of the season I thought I'd share a relaxing vista for you to look at and enjoy. This is a view of Addison Farms Vineyard near Asheville, NC painted late this last summer. If you feel this piece has a slightly surreal or fictitious quality, it's because I painted it mostly from memory, after having one plein-air session at the Vineyard.

Painting from recollection and imagination is at once a great technical challenge and richly rewarding. You find yourself looking at things with great care and attention to store away the necessary information. See if you can spot my friend Paul Blankinship, a fellow painter, walking amongst the vines in the distance.

I'm pleased to share that this piece is currently showing at Greenhill Art Center in Greensboro, NC, for their annual Winter Show, a curated group exhibition surveying some of North Carolina's best artists. Six of my works are on display through January 3rd. You can see photos of the exhibit below.

Happy Holidays to everyone! I'll write again soon to share more news, it's been a busy season.

One of my favorite parts of doing a commission for someone is hearing their initial reaction to the first designs that I do for their piece. It's a leap of faith sort of feeling, as I have to do my best to satisfy my creative yearnings and the concepts that they have in mind. When the two are able to marry well together it's a real thrill.

Here's an example of the initial sketches for a commission I'm doing commemorating the 20th century polymath Buckminster Fuller. Fuller was a prodigious writer, inventor, teacher and visionary, conceiving of the geodesic dome and other novel pragmatic and philosophical ideas across many fields.

This was the first composition sketch, done in walnut ink over pencil. He holds a large tome and sits at a desk in his workshop. Buckminster Fuller worked and taught at Black Mountain College, an innovative avante-garde college located not far from where I live in Asheville, NC.

The initial skech got the okay from my client who also offered some suggestions, so I went ahead and started detail sketches. I used various photos of Mr. Fuller as reference and came up with the above portrait. I then had my father pose for studies of hands.

And finally I did this more detailed rendering which also includes some items of significance on the table in the foreground. Three roses in a vase, a single lit candle, geometric sketches of Buckminster's and a few other books. With this I'm ready to start painting! Look for that in the next post.

Just finished a nice article by Robert Gamblin of Gamblin Paints which compares classical and impressionist painting aethetics in the context of painting technique as well as the social roles that the artists served in their time. Really informative! Check out more here: https://www.gamblincolors.com/why-classical-and-contemporary-paintings-look-so-different/

Wanted to share a bit of what I've been working on the last few days in the studio. Lots of artwork in progress!

This 18x24" oil painting is an enlargement of a smaller painting I did on location in Swananoa, NC as a commission. It's coming right along!

A detail shot of the pines in the lower left corner from the above painting.

Also this morning I did a quick ink sketch from memory based on a walk I took this morning. It is a stormy, windy mid-November day and I wanted to reflect the energy out there.

Another sketch I did today after I got home, this one is the 'first thought' for a composition tentatively titled "Into the Badlands". The top drawing is graphite, the color study is watercolor.

Here's one last one, another recent watercolor 'first idea' sketch for an imagined seascape at Dusk. This was inspired by the color scheme of a watercolor by my friend, the accomplished artist Christopher Holt, which I saw at his home during an opening he did recently. 

As I'm preparing a grant application I thought I'd share this drawing, which I've included in my app. It's a special one, one of my first experiments with throwing a bunch of moving figures into a setting and seeing what happens. I did this by taking people from a variety of paintings in Peter Paul Rubens's "Medici Cycle" series and putting them together into a new composition akin to that style.

I was at the Louvre studying his amazing painting cycle in 2012, working with Studio Escalier. I was taken with the above painting in particular, titled "The Felicity of the Regency". Note the cherubs in the middle are drawn into my assemblage above. Before doing that I spent about six weeks doing a "3D" spacial study of this painting, converting all of the major masses of the figures into tilted boxes, and wrapping them in implied curves of movement deduced from the above composition.

Here's an image of that drawing, smudged from working and reworking. I called it "Boxes Wound of String". 

Here I am with Sally outside of the Louvre. Probably have those drawings in that portfolio to the left.

Headed towards the Tower, a stunning sight at night.

Under the Eiffel Tower.

The goofiest picture! I swear this is not photoshoped, the lighting an angle are so funny! 

I'm pleased to announce that a great new Asheville, NC boutique, called Désirant, is offering some of my original oil paintings created in France. Check out some of the work that they have available in their amazing shop:

"Argenton Roses", oil on belgian linen mounted on panel. Custom frame. This piece was painted plein air in Argenton-les-Vallées, France. 

"Wildflowers on the Wall", oil on canvas mounted on panel. Custom frame. Another plein air piece from Argenton-les-Vallées.

"Wisteria", oil on hand-prepared panel. Custom frame. Yet another plein air from Argenton. 

Painting from Memory

I say these are plein air paintings, meant painted from observation directly outdoors. However all three of these were in fact elaborated greatly from memory after I had a few sittings painting the actual subject from life. In the case of "Wisteria" and "Wildflowers" almost the entirety of the overpaintings were achieved from recollection some months after observing the scene from life. This was mainly due to time constraints. I rather enjoy working from memory, though, as it gives the scene time to distill to its most essential elements, and gives the paintings a sort of second-hand, recalled, story-told, dream like feel.

Getting some small original oils ready to ship today to the shop at Greenhill in Greensboro, NC. 

These are some of the pieces that will be retailing there for the holidays:

"Heirloom Tomatoes", oil on belgian linen mounted on panel. Custom frame.

"Spring Daffodils", oil on paper mounted on panel. Custom frame.

"Blue Ridge Spring Study", oil on paper mounted on panel. Custom frame.

"Spring Nocturne", oil on canvas mounted on panel. Custom frame.

So funny I laughed out loud heartily!

Inspired by some of JMW Turner's sketchbooks I decided to take my new watercolors for a spin last night and drew up some quick studies. These sketches are quick compositions done from memory to try and set a mood for future oil paintings.

This one is based on a pine farm my girlfriend and I stayed at in South Carolina. I would get up before dawn and run out to sketch this scene as the sun came up. 

These quick messy studies recall a boat trip I was on with my girlfriends' family, during which a massive thunder storm took place. Again, playing with future ideas for compositions.

A quick sketch of some backlit trees at sunset in central North Carolina.

Another little quick one, and here's the watercolor kit!

Just amazing, sketchbooks of JMW Turner, the maverick english landscape painter. I saw a fantastic exhibit of his work in Salem, MA last year. and I quote him, "The only secret I have is hard work." Hahaha! Lovely!

I've been on a trip to Florence, SC with my girlfriend Sally, headed there to take down her art exhibit at the Florence County Museum. We got swamped with rain from the hurricane and ended up getting flooded out of the guest house we were staying at on some friends' property! 

While it was pouring outside and Sally was teaching a workshop at the museum, I as always busied myself with art. I often like to do master copies while I'm on vacation, and on this trip I got to work on two. Both of these drawings are after Peter Paul Rubens from an excellent book of his drawings that I found at a used bookstore in Paris.

This one is after a copy Rubens did of a Michelangelo figure. It's graphite on paper.

And this is a drawing after an etching-design of the mythical figure Silenus, the inebriated tutor of the wine god Dionysus. 

Meanwhile on the property where our guest house was, the back yard was getting totally flooded with rainwater. Here's a few pics I shot before we left for a hotel on higher ground: