Grandma's Doll

This 5x17 inch oil on watercolor paper is done in ultramarine blue and indian yellow with touches of titanium white for the highlights. It's done in a glazing technique with Liquin. The "doll" is an unglazed pottery figurine about eight inches tall. She used to carry a basket of flowers, but that got broken some time ago by small fingers exploring.

Wild Sky Over Water

An 8x11 inch landscape in oil on sanded pastel paper.

Arrangement in Green

Etude en Vert

This 16x20 still life is done in oil on traditional stretched canvas. It is one of the three paintings that are hanging in the gallery at Maison Catherin'Art. If it looks somewhat familiar its because its the predecessor of the pastel I posted on 23 September. That one was titled Still Life with Harvest.

Big Sky

This little landscape is a 5.5x10 inch oil painting on sanded pastel paper. Perhaps it should actually be called a skyscape since it is more about the the depth of perspective in the sky than it is about the landscape itself. The trail leading out of the meadow and seemingly into the sky serves to emphasize the expansive depth of the sky.

A word about the technique of painting on paper. The initial underpainting is done with paint heavily diluted with turpentine. This gives the paint qualities more closely associated with water colors, but with a great deal more control. Subsequent layers are thicker, and the final touches, the highlights on the trees for example, are directly from the tube.

Fish--God's eye view

Thought for the week: The shadow does not belong to the object which casts it, but to the light which creates it.

This is a 5x7 inch oil painting on paper.

Still life with pitcher

This still life is a 10x12 oil on stretched canvas.

guacamole pre-constructed

This 9x12 inch oil sketch on canvas is part of what I call my 'pre-constructed' series. The notion of pre construction comes from watching the Food Network and the trend of serving food in a de-constructed state. The best example I've seen of this is the chef who served a 'deconstructed' lemon meringue pie--On a long shallow plate he placed a wafer (to represent the crust), a serving of lemon pudding (to represent the filling), and a meringue based cookie (to represent the meringue)--voila! lemon meringue pie deconstructed. A bit too precious for my eating tastes, but the genesis of an excellent idea around which to build still life portraits of the everyday.

Fantasie still life

This 9x12 inch oil on canvas is made up of what I call 'invented objects' which bear no relation to any objects in reality.

Still life with sunflowers

This is a 9x12 inch oil on canvas. Even on canvas, sunflowers always bring with them a hint of late summer, and always evoke thoughts of sad, bad, and quite mad Vincent van Gogh.

The Tiger

This 7x7 inch work is done in oil on black paper. It makes me think of the William Blake poem:


The Tiger

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?


In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?


And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And, when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?


What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?


When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?


Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

snowbound

This 9x12 inch oil sketch on canvas is loosely based on a photograph of an abandoned boat taken in northern Ontario along highway 11 east of Nipigon. Over the years the boat has slowly lost ground to the elements until it is now just a pile of wood that could have been pretty much anything in its better days.