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.

The pursuit of happiness.

I look forward to my wife getting home from work.

To time spent with our kids.

To the company of our dogs.

To work.

Somewhere in a book by James Lee Burke- maybe Jolie Blon’s Bounce?- he writes that the secret to being happy is really just a matter of having something to look forward too.

I look forward to fall.

To the woods, carpeted with leaves.

To the rain.

To the rumbling echo of the river inside the hood of my jacket.

To the light, quick flight of a scandi line.

To the deep, slow, into-the-cork load of a skagit head.

To flies the size of the palm of my hand.

To the flow of the river.

To the tug of a steelhead.

The art season was grueling this year. And it continued into steelhead season, my favorite time of the year.

But steelhead season always brings me back to ground. Last week I met a guy along the river, and we talked, about fishing, work, and life. He picked up on me being frustrated with work, with being tired from the season. And he said, I have the solution for you, from Mark Twain. He said, When you are tired of working, start back when you feel like it.

Permission from beyond.

I am ready to get to work again.

Uly

It's been a busy, hot spring, with some heartbreak involved. We lost our dog Molly about 6 weeks ago, after 15 years as the anchor in our dog world.

We had decided to wait til fall to look for a new buddy, but Finn was showing too many signs of loneliness.

So we went looking, and found Uly (Ulysses).


110 lbs. of cure for loneliness.


We're all happy with the addition.


Well, almost all of us.

Another from the Susquehanna River series

Island in Late Afternoon. 40 x 32 inches, oil on linen.
Another from the series of the Susquehanna, a river I travel along so often. The energetic surface quality of the painting reflect a lot of what I learned working on the really large canvases  for the Artifact show. I aim to have the expressionist feel of the paint convey the texture of the environment.
I've begun work on a series of the Deschutes River, on the other side of the country in my home state of Oregon. Every time I get comfortable thinking I know something about what I am doing, I find I'm full of...... how 'bout we say new ideas about directions and meaning. OK, crap. My dear, sweet wonderful wife found out this weekend when an off-hand question opened the door to the level of frustration  I am feeling over a new piece. More next time.
Suffice to say, I am very lucky she loves me.

Yeah, I've been......

sluggish lately..... well, with all things internet-ish. Blog, website.

I've been going like a mad-man in other aspects of life. Five shows into the season, 15 paintings have found new homes..... and I've been doing a fair amount of fly tying this spring too. What's fly tying got to do with painting, you say? Nothing- I was trying to segue away from the lame slug joke, and homage to my pop, RF Harrington, and his sense of humor.

The slug? Seen walking around the Oklahoma City Art Festival earlier this spring. More posts to come. I'm perking.

The end for now.....


The Artifact of Landscape show came down this week. I have to take a break from the magnum landscapes for a bit and work on some smaller scale work for my show season. Well, smaller by my new 12 feet is medium-sized standard. I have several 4, 5 and 6 foot paintings underway, which should start finishing up in the next few weeks.

I'm excited about the upcoming show season and the pieces I am getting ready for it, and at the same time, there are ideas for the extra-large landscapes bubbling just under the surface that are hard to put aside for the moment.

Oh well, art was never supposed to be easy, and if it was, I'd be bored.


Slough Creek

Slough Creek Overlook, Lamar Valley, Yellowstone National Park,
48 x 58 inches, oil on canvas, curio cabinet, 8 x 59 inches.

One of the core pieces from the show, The Artifact of Landscape, opening with a reception tomorrow at the Lockhart Gallery, 5 - 7 pm. The Gallery is located at 26 Main Street in Geneseo New York.

This piece is representative of a new direction in my work, landscape on a scale large enough to have a presence in front of the viewer, combined with a cabinet full of artifacts of and from that landscape. The close-ups below are the cabinet contents, spread between plaster casts of buffalo, grizzly and wolf tracks.


Artifact

ar⋅ti⋅fact - a handmade object, as a tool, or the remains of one, as a shard of pottery, characteristic of an earlier time or cultural stage, esp. such an object found at an archaeological excavation.

Molly's footprint. She's our 70 lb. lab/hound princess.

I don't know when I first made a cast- maybe a project in Cub Scouts, maybe in school. But the process always fascinated me, and I've made a few over the years.

A wolf track, the cast made along the Ivishak river several years ago.

A lot of people have the impression that wolves are like big dogs, like 100 lb. German Shepherd. I did, til my son and I saw them in Yellowstone a few summers back. They are like shepherds, just way bigger. Like a shepherd and a half. The track is almost 4 inches wide. Measure your hand. Wilderness makes you feel small. Vulnerable. I like to think it puts me in my place.

While I was in Alaska, I saw several grizzly tracks, and each time, my hair was on end, a queasy stomach. Lots of tracks, but none sharp enough to cast. Yes, I did have enough plaster, despite the weight limit on the bush plane. Not so many clean clothes, but I had the plaster. Just no sharp, well defined tracks.

The Lamar Valley in Yellowstone. Between here and the Hayden Valley, tough to say which is my favorite place in the park. Last year I fished the Lamar River too late into the evening. Til dark. The Lamar Valley, home to wolves, black bear and grizzlies.

I tried to be very quiet back to the van. A walk on wobbly legs, a sinking feeling in my stomach. Turned out fine.

But when I opened a package the other day, in the warm, safe confines of my studio, the sinking feeling was there instantly. I didn't make the cast, but I guess as a post-modernist, I'll appropriate it.

What's with the casts?

It's taken me a while to get here, I don't want to spill it all in one post.