Sail Away

This is from a series of small paintings where I used magazine pages as a starting point, mostly from Art Forum because I liked the square format and the interesting images. This one was a photograph of a sailboat inside a big tunnel and I painted in the figures wandering around in life jackets.

Laura's Painting

This painting was one of a series exploring the figure under water. I was interested in how the figure gets visually chopped, the head obscured, when viewed from beneath the surface. This is oil on canvas, 30" x 40".

Pansies

A bunch of pansies from my garden in a pretty jar that my dear friend Debbie gave to me. Oil on panel, 8" x 10".

Small Bird's Nest

This is a small oil sketch on raw linen, 16" x 16", part of the ongoing look at nests. Here I made the egg ambiguous--is there a hole in the nest or does it cradle an egg?

Portrait of Nike Rat

This is a portrait of the first rat toy, Nike, who was made out of an old and very soft Nike t-shirt. He set the standard for all future rats, with his long luxurious tale, beady intelligent eyes, and sausage legs, which are just barely covered by his crazy shorts. For these portraits I set each rat up inside a cardboard box and painted them life size.

Lemonhead with Self-Portrait

Ok, this one is a little more involved, and probably can't be easily explained.
It grew out of a grad school project, the purpose of which I fail to remember, but Lemonhead was somehow required to sculpt a self-portrait and he chose cheese as his medium, string cheese to be exact. And of course, a lemon for the head, and squash, tortilla chips, dry spaghetti, raisins, and an apple-skin bowtie.

Portrait of Lemonhead Rat

This is from of a series of small paintings of handmade stuffed animals which were favorite toys of my son. I approached these as if they were actual portrait commissions, looking for the personality expressed through pose, lighting, clothing, and setting. It is oil on canvas, 12" x 16".

Pepino Melons

This is a small oil painting on wood panel, 9" x 14". Here I was interested in just looking at the subject in the most concentrated way possible, with the most intense focus I could bring to it. This method of working creates a meditative feeling which the finished painting retains.

Bird Nest

Around the time our kids were leaving home I started to notice bird's nests everywhere I looked. I collected them and drew and painted them. This one is watercolor, 12" x 12".

Closeup of Offering.

Offering

The figure in this painting came from a drawing I did of a sleeping girl, but for the painting I wanted to suggest something about the attitude of meditation, a sense of abandon and trust that happens in the meditative state. Her hands cup a small blue egg in a classic pose of offering. It is 31" x 50" on raw linen, half drawn with red conte crayon and half painted in oil.

Beach Goddess

This little sculpture came about during a walk along Grayton Beach in the Florida Panhandle. We made a giant sand castle and it seemed to call for a resident Goddess. Her distinctively shaped torso, made from some sort of sea plant, was all of the inspiration I needed.

Five Plums

This site will feature a variety of work, from landscapes to figurative work to still life paintings, both small and large. Some work will have been done very quickly, completed in one session on the day of posting, while other pieces will be more elaborate, either in terms of size, technique, or complexity of subject matter. While many Painting-a-Day websites adhere to the strict discipline of producing one work each day, I would like to use this site to present a wider range of work.

This is a small oil painting on wood panel, 6" x 14". It is one of a series of very finished still life paintings that required a meditative level of focus to complete.