Five States in Six Days With Three Kids

Whew. That about sums up last week. We arrived back home on Sunday night after a six day trip to Yellowstone (starting in Arizona) going through Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and back. Our 11, 9, and 2 year-old did really well considering we had many long days in the car and spent each night in a different place. Thank goodness for books, games, and big sisters.
   The trip was a whirlwind, but very beautiful. Along the way my wife fell in love with several of the very rural towns in Idaho and the scenery throughout Idaho and Utah is definitely a landscape painters paradise. As soon as we shake off this cold we all seemed to pick up on the last day of the trip, I plan on starting a whole series of paintings from many of the places we visited, a few of which I've included below. So much inspiration I discovered along the way is just fighting in my head for first dibs to get laid down on canvas. I look forward to getting started! *cough* *sneeze* *sigh*

Dreaming of Icarus

Dreaming of Icarus
6 x 6 oil on panel
Reserved...for now

I tried to work thinner on this piece, and succeeded in the beginning, but as it evolved I caught myself on several occasions applying the paint a little thicker than I'd like. My goal—at the moment—is to allow the underpainting to play a larger role in my paintings and to bring out some of the details with more opaque strokes. It's a challenge as I'm continually wanting to define and refine instead of being more suggestive. One day I'll get there.

When, all of a Sudden...

When, all of a Sudden...
6 x 6 oil on panel

SOLD

About an hour West of Austin, TX is some great, open ranch land that's right on that transitional border between hills and Oak trees and flat grasslands that stretches on for miles and miles.

Edit: Replaced photo with a scan, now that the painting is dry.

Gone Without a Whisper

"Gone Without a Whisper"

7 x 5 oil on panel

SOLD

   I often get asked what my titles mean.  Most of the time they originate with stories that I make up involving something going on in the painting, or a story that I see coming out of the painting, akin to seeing shapes in the clouds.  With this piece, I imagined a man, standing in the park, watching his fiance walking away far down the path (if you click on the image above you can see a larger version where the figures are more visible.)  His fiance has just suddenly broken off the engagement, leaving him stunned in this beautiful place.  He watches her walking away, waiting for her to turn around, run back, and tell him that it was all just a joke.  She doesn't, and he watches until he can't see her any longer.  She just left him, without any warning, and was Gone Without a Whisper.

   Melodramatic? Definitely. A sad story coupled with a beautiful scene? Indeed.  But this is what came into my head when looking at the painting, and so it stuck.

08/21/10 Update: I've replaced the image above with a higher-quality scan.