Art Journal

Since very few people look at this ( I think I've ended up with like 3 comments in the last 10 years)  I will probably not be adding any new entries after today unless there is a groundswell of support for continuing.  Not sure too many people ever look at it.

A couple last notes:

Rooftop, 16 x 16,  a painting I did in 2023 just won the best building award in the August Plein Air Salon, and my painting Misty Morning, 11 x 14,  won best of show at the Fraser Plein Air event in August 2025. 

Also my painting First Snowfall, 8 x 10 won the Artists Choice Award at the PAAC annual show in Central City CO in September, and Spring Walk, 8 x 10  won honorable mention at the Masters of Light plein air show at 3 Square Gallery in Ft. Collins in September. 

Below, pics of them all:

Rooftop,      Misty Morning

First Snowfall,      Spring Walk

The Plein Air Artists Of Colorado annual show will be running at Mary Williams Gallery in Boulder CO until December 31. Check the gallery website  for hours. It's a great show.

The Address is 5311 Western Avenue, Unit 112. Hope to see you there.

Together, 12 x 9, in the show

The Plein Air Painters of New Mexico's 14th National Juried Members Show annual show will be going up  from  October  28 to November 10 at Wild Sage Gallery in Taos NM. The show will be plein air paintings produced by members of the group. The Wild Sage Gallery is located at 129 Kit Carson Road. Below is the painting accepted into that show which I will soon be shipping to NM. Stop in at the Wild Sage Gallery if you are in Taos in late October. It will be a great show.

Still Fighting, 9 x 12, is about a willow tree that fell over some years back when the river changed course but somehow it is still alive, even though the main trunk is dead. New shoots keep coming up from the roots. I painted this in January on a warmish sort of day, snow patches around but melting off.

Here's the last painting I did for the Boulder Plein Air event. I ended up not using this painting as we were only allowed to enter three.

It's from an early morning adventure out at Sandstone Park. I left at 5:30 AM and went out to get that early morning light and painted the trees on the hilltop.

Hilltop View, 10 x 8

On June 3rd I participated in the Loveland Plein Air event which is a fund raiser for a local charity. Artists are given a choice between painting at a local park or painting in the downtown area and I chose the park. The event finishes at the end of the day with an exhibit in which each artist gets to enter one painting and all the paintings are auctioned off.

I did two paintings and chose the second one for the auction.

Under the Bridge, 9 x 12, turned out to be time consuming and not the best thing to attempt for an event like this. I also wasn't sure anyone would want to buy the picture of the underside of a highway bridge.  Even though it was a very interesting scene with lots of nice color... So I did a second painting.

The second painting is below, Reflections, 8 x 10 which was auctioned off. I liked how it came out.

The only photo I have is the one taken by my phone at the auction. So the colors might not be right. It was done rapidly as I used up most of my time on the first painting.  There's a lesson that could be learned there in time management. Maybe someday I'll learn that lesson.

Here's the second piece of art I did at Jamestown, this time in oil,  for the Boulder Plein Air event. I did not enter this one. There was a small blue house perched on the edge of a cliff  with the racing clouds behind it and that became my topic. The wind picked up and occasional rain drops fell but I managed to finish this quick little painting. 

The Blue House, 10 x 8.

Cloud Drama at Jamestown,  the drawing I did there.

 The first day of the Boulder Plein Air event was a day at the Yellow Barn Farm. Here's my painting from that day, although I did not end up entering it as one of my three.

The Road Up, 12 x 9. The hillside behind this farm was burned out in the CalWood forest fire in fall of 2021 and these trees are pretty much dead now so the decision was: show them dead or show them alive? I had a discussion with another artist who told me of her experience. A local gallery received many complaints from customers that seeing dead tree paintings from the fire area was traumatizing which caused the gallery to remove the paintings. A lot of local people were directly affected by these fires and had their homes burned.  And then recently we had the terrible Marshall fire that burned up so many more homes. So fire-burned trees is a touchy subject these days.

On my second day of painting I got up at 5:30 and headed over to Stephen Day Park and the Spring Gulch Trail hoping to get some morning sky. It wasn't the sky I was hoping for but still was interesting. There was a large cloud bank hovering over everything in the east making for some interesting light.  It often happens that somehow I forget some important ingredient when I go to paint. One time I dumped over my solvent right at the beginning, so no solvent. One time I forgot my white paint, one time I forgot the blue.  One time I forgot to bring my canvas boards. So this trip I forgot to bring the paper towels. That meant I could not clean out my brushes or wipe them off. Not wanting to go back home and miss the chance, I decide to forge ahead using only the palette knife.  I had one measly paper towel sheet I found in the bottom of the pack and used it to wipe the blade occasionally. So as result this is a very textured painting, not exactly what I was planning but so it goes. This one I did put in the show.

Morning Clouds, 11 x 14