This is a diptych, a pair of paintings––each 8” x 8” before framing––painted in sequence at the same site in Southern France.

AU-DESSUS DE VALENCE I:

My sister, Dawn, lives in the South of France, in the city of Valence. When I go to see her, we often paint together. One autumn afternoon, we went for a walk up to a plateau above her neighborhood, a few kilometers from the heart of town and a world away. The quiet farmland was a delightful discovery, as was the golden afternoon light as it began to caress the landscape. I had just begun painting on colored backgrounds and this day, I used an ochre-orange wash that triumphed both the beginning autumnal shift of the colors and the warmth of that sky as the sun began to descend. It also is one of very few paintings that I liked within minutes of beginning. It was and is a delightful surprise.

AU-DESSUS DE VALENCE II:

This is a companion piece to a painting done in the exact same spot, a plateau above my sister’s home in southern France. In the first one, I used a warm ground that illuminated the sunset and the changing hues of autumn. This time, I made a radical shift and used a black ground, creating a dramatic mood that is at once sun washed and uniquely dark. I like the strength and intensity here, bright hues with dark undertones. This painting was as much a surprise in its completion as it was in its inception. Sometimes, paintings just seem to come out of one’s brush as if called forth; it isn’t the artist at work but the art coming to life. This is one of those paintings.

Acrylic 40″ H x 30″ W

I spent one winter month in Lima, Péru, the home of my wife’s family, and came equipped to paint. What I did not know was that Lima is cloudy and damp all winter and the light is flat and lifeless. Everything appears limp and grey without sunlight to embolden the colors and call out the shadows. I had spied this home on Calle La Paz—the Street of Peace–and its cyclopean crown of bougainvilleas and wanted desperately to paint it but no light, no shape equaled no painting. Then one day, my bride called to me that the sun was out so I hurried back to this house. Now, with sunlight, the flowers erupted in cascades of crimson and the shades of green proliferated. Now, the marigold walls of the house behind came to life and the old wooden door glowed. Now, I had a painting.

Oil on linen panel     8” X 10”

The rolling hills of southern California explode in a firestorm of orange and marigold when the poppies are in flower. Stretching for miles and miles in persimmon splendor, they are unmatched in their sheer natural exuberance. I saw these while visiting a friend in Laguna Beach, one of the beautiful towns lazing along the California Coast. I had to force myself to turn away from their golden beaches long enough to revel in this experience.  Would that every day posed such a quandary.

Oil on canvas panel     8″ x 8″

Oil on linen panel     8″ x 10″

Cracker Jack is a registered trademark of the Frito Lay company. Its inclusion here does not imply their endorsement of this painting nor of the artist, but the aforementioned artist will always have fond memories of Sailor Jack and Bingo.

Sailor Jack and Bingo are registered trademarks of Cracker Jack and the Frito Lay company. Neither one of them was harmed in the making of this painting.

Oil on linen panel     9″ x 12″

Across the plains and slopes of the Wyoming foothills splash thousands of acres of golden chimesa, a hardy plant that sips water and clings to the sun-burnt soil. Its flowers range from bleached buttercup yellow to golden marigold and its branches are a dusty olive with a gentle lavender cast. It’s not very tall, it’s not very showy but it’s hardy and persistent and it flows across the landscape like a dusty yellow sea.

Oil on panel     9” X 8”

Oil on panel     6″ x 8″

One of my dearest friends likes the art of Mark Rothko above all others. The longer we have been friends, the more time we have spent together examining and experiencing Rothko’s work. I have come to appreciate and enjoy the subtle tone poems that I find his contemplative horizontal bands of color to be. Standing in the misty light one fog-enshrouded winter afternoon in the Rockies, I was struck by how nature seemed to repeat the same gentle variations of color, one sliding into the next without hard edge or delineation, or else how Rothko’s work mirrored nature’s beauty. You pick.

Oil on panel     6” X 8”

Another painting done in a favorite stand of aspens outside of Cody, Wyoming. This sunny autumn afternoon, the sky was pale blue, shepherding sleepy puffs of cumulus clouds, fighting for my attention even as I tried to focus on the trunks of the trees. So a study in tree geometry opened up to become graced with a glimpse of the heavens.

Oil on linen panel