Studio blog

Quiet determination

This guy sits on our piano. I painted it for my wife as a gift for Christmas. The original usually resides on our porch but right now sits on my flat file at the studio. That face, an expression of quiet determination.

New work installed in Park City

It was a wild and woolly ride up to Park City taking the last painting to the Julie Nester Gallery. As we rounded the corner to enter Parley’s Canyon truckers lined the road chaining up. It was snowing like mad. It was coming in sideways. Visibility was 10 feet maybe, and I’m thinking, “what am I doing?” I brought my daughter and niece along too as company. When we got to the gallery the box with the painting in it on top of the car looked a little soggy but otherwise all was well. The drive back was even more harrowing, ah well anything for art.

Here are my assistants:

And a couple more images of my work hanging in the gallery:

Painting transparency

This is the bust I was referring to in my previous post. Veiled Lady by Bazzanti resides in the Bankfield Museum in England. I think this is an amazing piece, you can feel the sheerness of the veil but it’s stone. The problem of depicting an object or person beneath sheer material is fascinating. I think you have to think of it as a whole, not as two separate things. Many years ago when I was in college I used to stand by a stream that ran through the lower campus of BYU. I was mesmerized by the moving water. I could see the surface of the stream, the reflections, the bottom, everything all at once and the question was how would I paint that. It was an intellectual pursuit really, because I never set up an easel by that stream to tackle the problem. So the Bizzanti piece, the stream, “The Couch” piece, and “Boxes” are kind of dealing with the same thing. I think I need to go back to that stream again, but this time armed with paint.

Water tank in Santa Ana

This is the last piece going to the Julie Nester Gallery. It’s 48 x 60 and is going tomorrow via the top of my car. This one came together perfectly. It was the right balance between lost and found edges, and loose and tight passages. I love the rhythm set up by the support structure holding up this immense water tank. I found it in Santa Ana, California. I think I will paint this again but break it down and change the background color so that it absorbs the structure.

A new triptych called ‘The Beaufort Scale’

New painting, a triptych. About 14 x 42 On shaped panels. Titled The Beaufort Scale. This scale is used to estimate wind velocity by observing the condition of the sea surface. This piece is going to be included in a group show at the Sloane Merrill Gallery in Boston opening on February 22.

These paintings are being included in a group show at the Julie Nester Gallery in Park City, Utah, and coincidentally that opening is also on the 22nd of this month. If you happen to be in either place drop by. I will be at the Nester gallery on opening night. These paintings took a lot of tweaking to get the space right. And it’s fascinating to create the illusion of opaque and clear plastic draping the subject. It reminds me of that bust in marble that suggests a thin veil covering the face of the woman. It appears transparent yet rendered in marble. I’ll track it down and post it so you can see what I’m talking about.

I love the little painting of stones, the dark on dark is arresting. I think I’ll do something more with that, perhaps a bigger canvas while maintaining about the same size stones, just more of them.