I have always loved holiday weekends. Well, who among us does not...three days off with nothing much to do but celebrate the holiday, visit with friends, barbeques, picnics, fireworks, etc. A chance to feel free of what a friend of mine once referred to as "the golden handcuffs", wear shorts and flip flops and pursue a passion. For some that means sailing or gardening or even catching up on housework that has gone unattended. For me it means doing what I always do...paint outside!...but I do it with a greater sense of freedom.

I have one friend who has been after me for sometime now to come and paint the view from the deck of her house on the beach in Bayville, NY. Now, as every artist knows, every one of their friends believes that they and only they have the greatest view on the planet. The problem usually is that while a view might be very nice it does not necessarily translate into a good painting. But I knew the general area where she lives and thought the prospects might be pretty good.

I arrived to find what was indeed a very nice view. I did compress a couple of elements, such as the osprey nest which was just out of my view to the left, to add some visual interest but am happy with the feeling of this painting. What really made this an unusual plein air painting event was that my friend refused to allow my champagne glass to run dry! I call it "Beth's View":



Saturday, the 4th, found me heading out east very early in the morning for two reasons. First, I had a particular reason for wanting to paint at a certain place in Stony Brook, NY and thought a high tide would be necessary for a successful painting. High tide was at about 5:30 AM and, while I didn't head out THAT early I was assured plenty of painting time before low tide. Second, if you live on Long Island you come to fear the phrase "Hampton's traffic" and especially fear it on holiday weekends. The earlier the better. I arrived in Stony Brook at about 7:45 AM and, while I knew where I wanted to go and had a rough idea where it was, suddenly realized I didn't know quite how to get there. I pulled into a parking lot along the water and asked two nice women, who were out for their morning walk, how to get where I was going. After they gave me very thorough directions and resumed their interrupted exercise I just stood for a moment and looked at the view in front of me. I decided I didn't need to go any further, got out my rig and painted "The Fourth of July - Stony Brook, NY":



I had an appointment with a commission client at noon today in Cold Spring Harbor, NY and, in view of a forecast that promised temperatures in the mid-90's as well as increased humidity, thought it might be best to get my painting in early. I was given permission to set up my gear in the parking lot of a local yacht club. I loved the haze that was already in the air and the way it made everything feel hot and yellow. I also was taken with the brightly colored kayaks on the beach on the left hand side which I really just suggested with a couple of brush strokes. "Kayaks":



I'm pleased by the fact that I think you can see the humidity increase over the past three days of painting. I'm also pleased that I am not out in the heat now but am instead in the studio writing to you all and looking forward to the fireworks later on tonight! A  happy and safe Fourth of July to you all!

I participated this past weekend in the 4th Annual Northport Plein Air Event in the beautiful harbor side town of Northport, NY. I always look forward to this weekend as it is the first of these events which I do every year and, as such, is the first time I get to see a lot of my colleagues after we have all been tucked away for the winter. As is usual with events like this, the artists paint on Friday and Saturday and then the still wet paintings are auctioned off on Sunday. In the case of the Northport event, the auction is held at LaMantia Gallery on Main Street.

I arrived early and set up down by the harbor to paint. I was really impressed with the stillness of the water and the way the reflections seemed to drip off of the bottoms of the boats. I was very happy with the result for two reasons: first, I felt I accomplished most of what I set out to achieve and, second, it is a really wonderful feeling to know that on the morning of the first day of painting that you already have something good enough to submit for the auction. I called it simply "Northport Harbor".



I took a long break, visited with some friends, had a bite to eat and then set out to paint some more. If you are in the NY area then you know how hot it was during the afternoons over the past few days. My friend Ward Hooper suggested a view he liked from the parking lot of a local marina. When I arrived I liked the view as well and immediately set up and went to work. While the view was appealing, I was set up on the blacktop in the marina parking lot without any shade and, after about an hour, the heat started to really get to me. I started to feel a bit nauseous, thought heat stroke, and decided it was time to pack up and find a bit of shade. I don't normally post unfinished paintings but in the spirit of full disclosure, here it is.



After a good nights sleep and lots of re-hydration I was back early the next morning. There is a green market in the parking lot by the harbor every Saturday morning and every year I think to myself "I'm going to paint the green market"...and this would be the year. I set up in the parking lot between two cars and went about getting some paint on the canvas. From my perspective the market is situated in another parking lot which is bordered on one side by large trees. It was pretty easy to see that the overall color harmony was green and I set about covering my canvas with a warm green and transparent red oxide wash. With clean turps on my rag I drew the tents by carefully wiping out the green wash I had just applied and set about rendering the market without paying any real attention to rendering the trees. I loved the millions of shapes and colors and kept after myself not to render anything too completely. I was trying to prove to myself something that I had heard from a very fine painter named Ralph Oberg who said that you can "suggest" a great deal more detail with a well placed and very thick directional brushstroke than by actually attempting to render it. This is an unusual painting for me and it was difficult to complete on site as the green market attracts a huge crowd of people, most of whom would eventually make their way over to where I was set up to watch what I was doing. I really enjoy chatting with folks who stop by but it also had the effect of turning what is usually a two hour job for me into an almost four hour job. That coupled with the fact that the shade I had originally set up in had evaporated and I was now on an asphalt parking lot in the noon day sun. Having no real desire to repeat what happened the day before I decided to pack up and retreat to the shade for some lunch. I call the painting "Green Market-Northport, NY".



Sunday's auction was VERY successful for the Northport Arts Coalition and for myself. "Northport Harbor" enjoyed multiple bids! As has become an annual custom a group of us then head down to Skippers which is a great pub near the water to toast our success. Northport in June...I look forward to it every year!

The weather forecast wasn’t grim. It just wasn’t calling for bright sunshine but rather for the chance of thunderstorms late in the afternoon which is precisely when I set out to paint. I checked the radar map on line before I left and assured myself that I would have time to get in a few hours.

I drive past this spot often on my way to Huntington as well as my class at the Art League of Long Island. It is on top of the hill leading out of Cold Spring Harbor toward the east, the land owned and operated by the Nature Conservancy. I usually drive past here in the morning and always think to myself that the light would be great on this stand of trees in the late afternoon.

I arrived to find bright sunshine and some rather gusty winds and was immediately impressed with the way the late day light illuminated and warmed the trunks of the trees. It wasn’t until I was faced with rendering the foreground that I noticed all of the cool greens and violets that lived in the shadows cast there. One of the things I love most about painting from nature are the surprise color harmonies that are there for all to see and, if you happen to have paint and canvas before you, to capture in your painting.

Note that all of these small sketches are available for sale directly from me via this website. Simply click on the “Paintings and Prints” tab and then on “Available Paintings”. The price includes shipping costs.

Memorial Day. Two words which mean different things to different people. There is what I hope is the obvious meaning where we all remember and honor the courageous people who have fought to protect this country in both past and current conflicts. We owe these people our freedom.

But, for me, there is also the extra and implied meaning…the unofficial beginning of summer. Everyone has their favorite season and, to be quite honest, summer is not my favorite season. Summer brings humidity to the Northeast and I do not like humidity. So that we are clear, let me repeat…I DO NOT like humidity.

But what I do like to do is to paint outdoors and, while that can be done in any season, there is nothing like the promise of a full summer laid out before you. Most likely it is the vestigial imprint on my brain reminding me of time spent watching the calendar, counting the remaining days in the school year until I was free…FREE for two whole months! Memorial Day, to me, means freedom in a number of different ways.

The day promised to be a beauty and I knew immediately where I wanted to paint. I set off in the plein air mobile for Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Park in Oyster Bay, NY. I had wandered through this beach on a few occasions in the past and knew it had everything I wanted for a painting on this day…blue sky and the blue waters of Oyster Bay, people strolling and relaxing and, most importantly, the American flag flying free in the slight breeze.

Note that all of these small sketches are available for sale directly from me via this website. Simply click on the “Paintings and Prints” tab and then on “Available Paintings”. The price includes shipping costs.

I’ve always read that no on site landscape painter enjoys painting on a windy day. I know some that will sit and paint in their vehicle in the rain or snow. But wind…that will have them running for the comfortable confines of the studio and a nice still life. Perhaps I should have followed their lead. This past Saturday saw the leading edge of a very windy cold front come through Long Island, NY at about mid-day. In fact, the real reason I went out to paint at all was that we lost our electricity as soon as the wind began to blow. We ended up being without electricity for 31 hours!

I had heard earlier in the week from a friend who works at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory which is located directly across the street from last week’s painting and blog subject entitled “Saint John’s Church”. The CSH Lab sprawls over many picturesque acres of what, years ago, was referred to as Bungtown. A bung hole is the hole in a watertight cask or barrel and a bung is the plug or stopper. Cold Spring Harbor was a whaling village in years past and Bungtown was the capitol of bung manufacturing.

My friend Sandy had told me that there were many nice views to be had at the end of Bungtown Road and she did not exaggerate. I managed to get myself set up in the lee of a large group of trees so that the 30-40 MPH gusts of wind were not too much of a factor.

If you read my blog regularly then you know that I always learn some valuable lesson every time I paint on site. This week the lesson was that if you set up in the lee of a stand of trees the sun will eventually drop below said trees casting shadows on your painting which will annoy you. As a result I had to keep inching my easel out from behind the relative comfort of the trees and into the teeth of the cold wind. I have a fairly high tolerance for physical discomfort coupled with a work ethic that compels me to finish any job I’ve begun. I gritted my teeth and soldiered on.

I was beginning to debate whether or not I was near to being finished and, quite frankly, my flinty resolve was beginning to crumble. At this point nature intervened by lifting my palette out of my very sturdy Soltek easel and carrying it twenty feet to my right, dropping it face down in the sandy path.

Painting session over.

Note that all of these small sketches are available for sale directly from me via this website. Simply click on the “Paintings and Prints” tab and then on “Available Paintings”. The price includes shipping costs.

It happens to me often. I’ll be mindlessly driving along in the car when, suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I’ll catch just a quick glimpse of what can only be described as heaven. The perfect landscape! Right there, just to my left, a living, breathing, Bierstadt painting. Shafts of golden sun light, blazing brilliantly through parted dark storm clouds, falling upon a lyrically undulating meadow, highlighting the most perfectly shaped oak this side of Great Britain.

Without even a hint of concern for myself or my fellow motorists, I execute the most dangerous U-turn ever attempted... I will often drift off to sleep at night after manufacturing this very sort of perfection in my minds eye. Now I am about to come face to face with my dream of the ideal and my heart pounds with excitement. After what seems like hours I finally arrive at the source of my vision, bolt from the car, and…

What confronts me? The clouds have moved to obscure the sun. There is no light. The undulating meadow is, in fact, a nearly completed, brand spanking new Walmart. And, my mighty oak? A water tower. I am again a victim of what I refer to as “The Tease”. “The Tease” is the prospect in my minds eye of the perfect landscape. It is the burden borne by every landscape painter that somewhere, just around every corner, lays the perfect landscape, innocently waiting to be painted by me and only me.

So, once again, I was driving home late last Friday afternoon when out of nowhere “The Tease” gripped me once again. Just for the briefest of moments I glimpsed Saint John’s Church in Cold Spring Harbor through parted trees. The low sun made the whites of the church and steeple glow and shimmer in the reflecting pool. Perfection!

But, I would not be fooled again. I would not be tempted. This time I would not give in to “The Tease”. And for that decision I paid a terrible price. You see, if one does not obey “The Tease”, one suffers from terrible spasms of doubt. I could not sleep that night for thoughts of “maybe that was the one”. I painted at Center Island Beach on Saturday morning but my mind was in Cold Spring Harbor. I checked my watch all day long at half hour intervals until finally, at 3:30 in the afternoon I set off to be disappointed again.

I arrived at Saint John’s at 4PM, the precise time I passed by the day before. I got out of the truck, grabbed my gear and hiked the short distance to where “The Tease” gripped me yesterday. I clamored down a wet embankment, regained my footing and, almost cautiously, raised my eyes to survey what lay before me. And there it was.

Not the Bierstadt image of my dreams but the best I could hope for on this day. A lovely white church and steeple, illuminated by a low sun, casting it’s reflections on the foreground pool. On this day I was able to make an uneasy peace with “The Tease”.

Note that all of these small sketches are available for sale directly from me via this website. Simply click on the “Paintings and Prints” tab and then on “Available Paintings”. The price includes shipping costs.

Perseverance. That’s all it takes. At least that’s what I’ve always been told. When you get knocked down, you get back up, brush yourself off and try, try again! My last on site painting attempts have all ended up with a scraped off panel and a lot of wasted paint. Well, maybe the paint wasn’t wasted. There is always something to be learned. My last lesson was that even the most nicely rendered sky won’t overcome the fact that, if there is no thought paid to composition, there really isn’t a painting. As another well known landscape painter once remarked “…that panel deserved better!”

So it was with what I’ll call “hesitant determination” that I set out today with my pochade box and my tripod and my water bottle to “get back on the horse”. I scouted a few locations in the village of Bayville which seems to always sit picturesquely on the North Shore of Long Island.

I discovered a lovely, off the beaten path view I had never encountered before. I was determined to make some proper decisions based on the view that was presented to me and felt as though I accomplished just that. It had a nice composition, good value contrasts, and was back-lit and dramatic…it had everything going for it. I set out my paints, uncovered my mineral spirits, got my panel in place, and picked up my brush to begin.

Then, as if by some manner of cosmic taunt, a large cloud moved from in front of the sun and brilliantly lit the view opposite the one I was about to execute. I deliberated for all of two seconds and decided I rather liked the two round bushes and the contrast between the deep blue/violet water in the distance and the warm, straw colored grass. Without any more thought than that, I began to paint. For someone whose confidence had already been eroded this seemed a recipe for another scraped off canvas and more wasted pigment.

However, I really like the result and that’s all that matters. The lesson for today was spontaneity can sometimes win out over hesitant determination.

Note that all of these small sketches are available for sale directly from me via this website. Simply click on the “Paintings and Prints” tab and then on “Available Paintings”. The price includes shipping costs.

“Front Lit Lindens” is my first on site painting this year and that is a wonderful feeling. I should get out in all seasons and in all kinds of weather and have made a commitment to myself to do that this year. If I intend to spend my life painting nature from nature then I must be open to whatever nature has to offer be it sun, wind, rain, snow…locusts!

 

That being said, this past Sunday was one of the most glorious days that I can remember. Nature presented no challenges on this day, only bright sun and perfect temperatures with just a hint of a cool breeze. I drove the short distance from my house to The Planting Fields Arboretum which is one of my local default places to paint. After only a brief scouting walk I settled on this view. I was just amazed by the contrast of the warm gray tree trunks looming out of the grayish green foliage behind them compared to the brilliant, glowing carpet of yellow wildflowers.

 

Note that all of these small sketches are available for sale directly from myself via this website. Simply click on the “Paintings and Prints” tab and then on “Available Paintings”. I try to be very attentive about putting a sold tag on any piece as soon as it sells. It is probably best to send me an email to check on the availability of any piece that you might be interested in adding to your collection. The price includes shipping costs.

This is the salt marsh at Caumsett State Park and this place has gotten into my blood. Normally it takes much longer for me to feel this way about a particular place. I used to need to have much more of a sense of familiarity, I needed to have been there often or to have something special take place there. Like Prybil’s Beach in Glen Cove where I spent so many summer days or Fair Harbor on Fire Island where I used to vacation with my family.

I had only been to Caumsett once before that I can remember. But in the early Spring of 2009 I was driving around to the more familiar places that I paint and I just wasn’t getting turned on to anything, not getting that feeling that says “Ooh, I NEED to paint that”. What I needed was something new, some place new and Caumsett popped into my head. I ended up spending a lot of time painting there this past season and will be back on the first moderately warm day because it has so much to offer.

I have painted out at the marsh a few times now. It is about a two mile walk with all of my gear on my back so it is not easy to get to. And, to be honest, it is not the kind of place that offers great views everywhere you turn. But the few places where I like to set up my easel are worth the walk. That coupled with the strategy of visiting at different times of day and in different seasons are what make places like Caumsett such a treat. There is always a surprise. And what I’ve learned is that an artist needs to be surprised. That can get into your blood with even more conviction than familiarity.

“Autumn At The Marsh” is for sale and available on this website. Click on “Paintings and Prints” to the left and then on “Website Exclusives”. The painting is unframed and the price includes shipping via USPS Priority Mail.

I’ve discovered crock-pot cooking! After just a little bit of preparation and an average of eight hours of cooking time you get a wonderful hot and nutritious meal and, as an added bonus, wonderful smells throughout the house. It is, for me, an ideal way for the busy artist to prepare good food.

The other thing I’ve discovered is that I’m spending more time in the produce department of my local grocery store. For a recent gumbo recipe I needed all kinds of things that I don’t normally buy including okra. I also needed some tomatoes and wandered over to where there sat a nice selection of wonderful red-orange vine ripened beauties. I settled on one in particular and separated it from the others by breaking off the dried vine and, when it was alone in my hand, I suddenly was taken with its nice shape and the wonderful pattern the vine made. I knew right away that I would have to paint it.

I’m sorry to say that this particular tomato did not make it into the gumbo as it was busy posing for me. It did, however bring us much joy after it finished sharing it’s beauty in the painting by becoming one of the integral components in the bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches we just had for lunch.

"Still Life with a Vine Ripened Tomato and Fall Flowers" is available for purchase on the Web Site Exclusives page of this website. The price is $250 which includes shipping by USPS Priority Mail.