Hilltop Show

I was chosen as Featured Artist at the annual Hilltop Country Day School show which ran from Oct. 26 thru Oct 28.  Showed 26 pictures in the main gallery.  Thank you all who attended and especially those who walked away with one of my paintings.  Here are a few pictures from the show.

These "Two Canoes" were a subject I spoke about in my demo on using photographs to create paintings.at the October SCAS meeting.

This is "Sparta Presbyterian" done as a triptych.

 I call this "Pumpkin Time" taken from the Anderson farm stand on Route 15, Sparta.

The "Van Kirk Oak"  at the Sparta Historical Society site. It is over 230 years old.

"Yellow House"  I painted this the week after the show.  I see this view from my deck across the lake.  Lake Mohawk Marina is on the right.

Plein air

This summer and early fall a few of us at the Sussex County Art Society have been having fun doing plein air sketches.  They are necessarily fast  and sometimes furious, trying to capture a scene quickly.  I have learned how much lighter colors are outdoors than in a photograph in my studio.   The experience of painting outdoors is one of great fun, and always a challenge to use ones skills.  It also reveals the painters unvarnished style.

The SCAS  picnic in June

Founders park at the fairgrounds in Augusta

Memorial park, Lafayette showing the Walkill river as a stream.

An early fall scene  deep inside Stokes state forest.

Another scene, an old barn, from Lafayette memorial park.

Winter Workshop

The Key West Watercolor Society held its annual winter workshop at the Studios at Key West in January.  A great chance to get away from the cold and snow!  Richard Stevens, from Arkansas, led the program that he called "Fast and Loose".  For four days we tried to loosen up.  It was a great workshop and a lot of fun and hard work.   Two of the pictures I sketched out, and reworked at home, are in the 31st Skylands show this spring at the SCA&H gallery on Spring St in Newton.

The first is a local horse barn in Stillwater

 

A second painting is a street scene on Duval Street--St John's Episcopal Church.

 

 

During the cold days of February back in Sparta I used one of Richard's exercises--doing a triptych of one scene to present it from different angles.  I chose one of my favorite restaurants,  Il Porto on the boardwalk here in Lake Mohawk.