Duluth/Superior Industrial Collection
Superior Mills, Duluth Hills 18" x 24" $8,900 - SOLD •
"A" Mill with Brooding Sky 8" x 12" - $3,400 - SOLD •
Rust and Reflection 8" x 12" - $3,400 - SOLD •
Bordello with Elevator 8" x 12" - $3,400
Industrial Plumage 8" x 10" - $3,400 - SOLD •
There is so much talent out there today. With the profusion of studio schools & ateliers quality training opportunities abound. Yet so much of the work amounts to well executed but often-soulless picture making.
Why is that?
Fear.
Add to this the power of social media and popularity by committee.
The combined weight of others opinions and successes can overrule our own.
Add to this the impatience for result and acclaim.
So we try and fast track our journey by supplementing our own organic search by substituting the solutions of others. We cobble together a quasi- idea of ourselves by wearing the clothes of others.
The collected result of this can lead to short- term acclaim but degrades the concept of originality on an industrial scale.
Delacroix said, “The student should develop well and naturally like fruit on a vine.”
Never before has that thought held so much weight.
May your work be organic and in season.
Industrial Harmony
Industrial Harmony in G (Gold) 28" x 40" $22,000
Painting outdoors is at its best a Living Experience in which the painting is informed by all of our senses.
Yet, for me the distillation of a living visual experience is best done away from the experience itself.
It is indeed an irony that facts can actually diminish a visual truth, but that has been my experience.
A dictionary filled with words will never be a poem.
My intention must be clear and singular.
Ultimately, my subjective truth must be a balance of objective facts and subjective witness to the experience.
Once I have enough objective facts to harmonize with my sensory truth, I simply look at the painting and let it tell me what it needs.
It's not always that easy - I often think I know better (ego).
I'm learning to be more patient, a better student - to look and listen for what comes back to me and leave the superfluous facts to the lawyers and accountants.
A little mystery is a good thing.
Sweden Paintings
Of Heaven and Earth 8" x 12" $3,400 - SOLD •
Brooding Sky 8" x 12" $3,400
Tyreso Sloot 8" x 12" $3,400
Summer Storm 8" x 12" $3,400
St. Olaf Church Sigtuna 8" x 12" $3,400
In the Shadows of Steinbeck
Wind, Soil & Sun 18" x 24" $8,900
Evening Salinas Valley 18" x 24" $8,900 - SOLD •
Looking for Tom Joad 8" x 12" $3,400 - SOLD •
Late Day Ploughing 8" x 12" $3,400 - SOLD •
Migrant Workers Casitas 8" x 12" $3,400 - SOLD •
Mission San Antonio de Padua 8" x 12" $3,400 - SOLD •
I love things that have an edge to them.
The ghosts of Tom Joad, George and Lennie and Adam Trask are up and down the Salinas Valley. They lived hard lives with moments of grace.
I read Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, East of Eden and traveled 2400 miles crisscrossing the Salinas Valley.
In the wind and sun and dust I became acutely aware of a particular power in his writing-It's about the proximity of opposites: Love/Hate, Scarcity/Abundance, Strong/Weak, Bold/Meek.
The more closely played off one another, the more impactful the result.
As a visual artist this makes sense.
He used the shadow (ego & human frailty) extensively to reveal the light and always, however dim, the possibility of redemption.
There is great beauty in the shadow.
It was something I needed to be reminded of.
There is truth in that edge too.
Sea Haze 18" x 24" $8,900 - SOLD •
Passing Storm 28" x 40" $24,000
Factory Shadow 40" x 30" $29,000 - SOLD •
Aggregate Yard in White Light 28" x 40" $24,000
The above work was painted cheifly from life in an area along the Mississippi, not far from my studio known as "Pig's Eye", named for a colorful 19th century Character who lived along the river.
The bleached white light and harmonious color with a shock of blue sky punctuated by small bits of red and yellow totally sent me. The challenges of dust, dirt and the rumbling of massive dump trucks passing within a few feet away was thoroughly unnerving.
It's the price we pay in trying to capture the DNA of a place.
February 2016
Chapel of St. Francis 1830 18" x 24" $8,900 - SOLD •
January, Mt. San Jacinto 14" x 22" $6,900 - SOLD •
After the Storm 8” x 12” $3,400 - SOLD •