Art Journal

This one is from Pella Crossing the other day. I was trying a different set of colors for my underpainting darks that used quinacridone violet and brown.

Spring Energy, 9 x 12

Here's a painting from up in the mountains that I did on the way to delivering some paintings to the Glass Tipi Gallery in Ward. I stopped at a little pull off and painted near the stream. The shadowed north sides of the mountains were snow covered, the south sides were completely bare. This stream had heavy snow banks on the far side but my side of the stream was completely melted off. It was a nice spring day.

Spring Melt, 9 x 12

Over the last year I've done several paintings of scenes from rooftops, all inspired by views from a local parking garage. This is the ninth painting I've done on this theme and this one is in the Governor's show this year. Basically everything, AC units, heaters, swamp coolers etc, on top of the local roofs that I have seen are colored gray or variations of gray. The challenge is to play on that gray and accentuate the tendencies toward other colors that will make the painting more interesting. I like doing these because I can push the colors any way that I want to, and essentially they become color studies. Also the shadows are a lot of fun to deal with.

Rooftop #9, 16 x 16

Here's another painting that is part of the Governor's Show. We often take walks late in the afternoon and one day after a winter snowfall I saw this scene of the melting footsteps heading off in the distance. Something about it inspired me to make a painting .

Heading into Night, 20 x 24

Below  is the last of the four paintings I have put in the Governor's show. The inspiration for this was a plein air painting I did one January morning on a snowy day that I developed into a larger painting.

Snow in the Air, 16 x 20

And of course the last one, Vail Pass View, 16 x 20, which I already posted about.

We took a morning trip over to Rabbit  Mt. the other day, me to paint, him to bike. It's quite nice in the spring and while painting this mountainous hillside caught sight of a bald eagle soaring overhead, searching for lift. I put the bird in the painting. the hills are starting to really green up now - May and June are the only two months of the year when the hills are green before they turn brown again.           

Riding the Lift, 8 x 10.

Here's a scene from last week - instead of painting the mountains to the west I chose to paint this little farm to the east, looking into the sun. The fresh greens of the surrounding grass were almost iridescent with the sun glowing behind them, a green you only get in spring.

Cherryvale Farm, 9 x 12.

My painting Fenceline, winner of best landscape in the June 2023 Plein Air Salon was recently chosen as one of the top 30 finalists for the whole year of 2023. This is a very exciting award. I will find out in late May if I win any of the top awards to be announced at the Pace 2024 Plein Air Convention.  Wish me luck!

The Governor's Show will open this coming Friday at the Loveland Art Museum in Loveland CO. I have four paintings entered in the show.  The opening for the public is Saturday May 11th.

One of my paintings in the show:

Vail Pass View, 16 x 20.

The idea for doing this painting developed from some charcoal drawings I did of some scenes in a local town.  I was working on a scene of the street corner and became interested in the shadows cast by all the items that are put on the corners - light posts, street signs, wheelbarrows that later get filled with flowers, newspaper display boxes, etc.  This seemed like an interesting thing to make a painting about, and I felt it had to be somewhat creative in color and very graphic to make it work. This is what I ended up with. This painting is entered in the Why Not Niwot contest coming up this summer.

Street Furniture, 16 x 16