Salon International 2010

I attended the Salon International 2010 Exhibition at the Green House Gallery in San Antonio, TX, this last weekend ... a wonderful event and met a number of great people and thoroughly enjoyed the show. Here's my painting included in the show of my daughter lighting a lantern.

This was one of the first paintings I created after attending a workshop with Dan Gerhartz. It was inspired by Maxfield Parrish and John Singer Sargent. A couple of summers ago, my daughters and my niece were delighted to light Chinese lanterns in our yard. I tried to capture the moment with a camera, but the images just didn't turn out very well even with a fast lens. So, after Dan's workshop, I decided to try this again working from life this last fall. My daughters and I went to Lyons Park here in Cheyenne, it has great scenery that I enjoy painting. We lit a Chinese lantern with a candle, and placed a second candle lantern behind her head to create a back lit situation. It was exciting and challenging to paint. My daughter was a real trooper to hold still while I worked to establish the information I needed to complete this painting. A group of teenagers while wandering through the park, commented on how cool it was to see us set up painting at night in the park. I use a couple of color balanced book lights to paint by at night that clip onto my easel, so I'm sure that our set up was an interesting sight with the lights and arrangement. Now that spring is coming, I'm looking forward to exploring more nocturne figure paintings from life.

I just finished reading James Reynolds landscape book ... it was great! A life time of experience ... how he approached painting, examples of his works and what he was thinking when he created them, philosophy on art, art fundamentals, life experiences and work ethic. ... I'm grateful that he left us a book on his thoughts and approach before passing on. It is loaded with many full page color images, details, and many black and white images where he discusses what he was thinking when he created the paintings from a value/design standpoint. It's like sitting down with him one on one and learning from him. The quality of some of the images my not be as good as what he would have liked, and there are some grammatical errors; however, the content/information in the book is excellent! He tells you his thoughts and doesn't pull any punches. I understand that there were only 500 printed, and there are no plans for a second printing. I admired him and his work, and will miss seeing more of his paintings. I highly recommend this book to those who want to know about his approach to painting. I've met him; however I never had the opportunity to learn from him directly, so I appreciate this book! Claggett/Rey Gallery in Vail Colorado has them available. http://www.claggettrey.com

J. W. Waterhouse Exhibit - Montreal

I visited the J.W. Waterhouse show at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts ... what an opportunity to see so many of his paintings in one exhibit. While visiting I met up with Jeremy Lipking, Joseph Todorovitch, David Kassan, Kerri McAuliffe, Dan Ferland, Alexi Steele, Paul McCormic, Dylan Keefe and Logan Hagege. It's always enjoyable to hang out with artist friends and look and study art, especially Waterhouse's work. It was my first time seeing his work in person, and I spent about 20 hours studying his work and taking notes over two and half days.