Pale Horse

Pale Horse, 16 x 20 inches, oil on glass.

I've been toying with animal images for years, trying to escape my pre-disposition for rendering the snot out of things. Then one day I was cleaning my pallet (I use a big sheet of glass), and saw the paint through the clean underside. Maybe there was a solution there.

I don't think it's something I'm going to repeat, working on the glass ground, as the fragility makes it too iffy, but it was a fun and satisfying experiment.

It will be my contribution to the Rochester Contemporary members show this month.

The painting doesn't actually have the reflection of my shoulder along the top, or the chair leg on the right. Turns out there are more problems with the glass than fragility.

WInter arrived...

this past week, with a quick dump of heart-attack snow, and the arrival of some favorite winter neighbors.

I love to watch the Short-Eared owls, often arriving as a pair, arcing crazily around the fields. Staying low and close to the ground, they'll wheel acrobatically and drop on something small and unseen in the distance.

Darby prefers the Harrier hawks, with their slow, gracefully rocking flight, also low and quiet above the winter turned field.

The cold is sudden, and not altogether welcome, but I've already found a painting in the harsh arrival. Something small, but atmospheric, should be done in a couple more days.

Evolution of a bear.

I am not a wildlife artist. So I've been saying for 25 years. And I'm not, unless I am. A somewhat atypical piece for me, a point along my own evolutionary path.

It is the memory of things I see and experience that I am most interested in. I have had an idea floating around in my head for a while now, about how this might be applied to animal imagery. Black Bear is not exactly what I have in mind, but it is a step along the path that I am happy with. Drawing something is one of the most effective ways for me to learn about it, to embed the memory. It is departing from the drawing and making something more than a rendering- that is the struggle.

Evolution is a slowly ongoing process, even on a personal level.

Black Bear, 44 x 40 inches, oil on canvas. Private collection.