Emergency pond repair!

On the hottest day of the year, so far, my brother called: the great blue heron or a raccoon or some other misbegotten creature had punctured the new liner we'd installed in his fish pond just a couple of months ago - taking a full day's hard labor!

So, sun beating down, my brother began transferring the fish into kiddie wading pools at the break of dawn today, and I cam over with a harvest of thrift store comforters as soon as possible. Two hours of back-breaking labor later we were done. Experience pays. Along with some brilliant ideas from your truly which cut the fish return effort into just a few minutes from what had taken hours last time.

Yahoo! Looks great. And hopefully is now permanent.

Full strength Summer

The studio warms up as the morning progresses. I keep the windows closed so that the heated air from outside stays outside, and have all the fans running. Being on the north side of the building, I don't have the sun coming in the windows, so I can last until about 2 or 3 pm before I am too hot, too sweaty, to move at all.

These days of summer, I work my way through a palette worth of paint at most. Sometimes I even leave paint on the palette and cover it with plastic wrap for tomorrow. Using up paint and running out of iPod battery power - these are indications that it is time to leave.

Lately, I have once again been struggling with what to paint. I am not in a block, but am not red-hot either.
I start my studio time by studying the photos I am interested in using as inspiration.
Sometimes - rarely - one will leap out and onto the canvas almost despite me.
Most of the time I shuffle through the sheets of paper, looking, feeling, trying to picture it. Then I settle on something and go to work.
Once I've begun, if it is going to work, I will fall into my working mode - singing (under my breath fortunately for anyone nearby!) and moving back and forth between the canvas and the palette and the photo and the stream of air from the fan.
Until the paint is gone or the painting is done or the heat has become too much to bear.

In any case, some new results from the past month's worth of work since my last entry:


         

    Farmer's Market Bounty I, II, and III

Morning Paper - final version

Antique American Landscape

Barefoot Picnic

Perched Above the Flood

All revved up and cranking them out!

Once again, each day seems only marginally productive, but then I turn around and look at the last month's worth of paintings and there's a lot there. Now for places to show them!

I'm doing something else different now, too.
When I am having trouble finding an image to paint, I turn and take a look at my older paintings. Sometimes I want to revisit a particular scene, sometimes an older painting spurs me to try something very different.
One of these (actually several of these) are from old and very old family photos (you'll know who you are!).

Cat Perch

House on the Strand

Morning Paper (reworked)

Universal Language

Magic Em

The Reading Lesson

Absent, but with an excuse!

This past week has been lacking in the painting department, but I do have a very good excuse!

I have been helping my brother expand his fishpond. The fish have been targeted recently by a beautiful but deadly great blue heron. So we decided to expand the pond and incorporate lots of underwater ledges and hiding places to give the fish a fighting chance.

Jim's estimate of fish population before this pond excavation began was about 40 - 50 fish.

When we got down to transferring them into the wading pools in order to reline the expanded pond, we found no more than 10, with only two larger than 5" long!

That heron is a superbly engineered fishing entity!

So, days later, and many hours of back-breaking work, and all that remains is cosmetic - for next week.

Life and Death (and the hereafter of paintings)

So, the scythe of destruction has swept through my paintings and has transformed them into new, reincarnated canvases, with heavier textures and more complex histories.

Here are two, with old and new versions.

Old

New

Old

New

Danger Will Robinson, Danger!

OK, I am giving notice: I am in a genuinely dangerous mood. Paintings beware!
I am restless and bored with the same old, same old. This means it's time to recycle canvases.

New works:

Some in imminent danger:

Crazy spring

Love the fact that more people have stepped forward to help with the Open Studios.
But with each succeeding year, I get more burnt out. Would really like to be able to hand over the chairmanship of this event to someone else.