Art blog » oil paint

Fat Tomato

april — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 14:13:53 +0000

This luscious tomato is from the local farmers market that comes to Prospect Park on Wednesdays. I got three and the first two were delicious, so I have high expectations for this one. My trick for getting the background color is to pick a t-shirt of a good color and place the object on it. This was a Led Zeppelin T from a vintage store in Miami of all places.

Small Boats

april — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 13:18:49 +0000

More impressionistic than most of my paintings, but I like the feel of these little boats, especially the water and reflections. I was inspired for this painting by a photograph from Mary Schwalm.

Sternberg Turm

april — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 15:31:06 +0000

This tower, which has 141 steps, is located near Offenhause, not far from Else, in southwestern Germany. When I visited it a few months ago, the sky was super blue and the clouds super bright white. I painted the tower from a photo I took while standing right at its foot and looking up.

Dead Banana

april — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 16:10:47 +0000

This banana peel aged so quickly that it became mostly brown within minutes of being removed from its center (which was delicious). The original purpose of the lightbulb was to provide some structure to the wilting dead pieces of fruit detritus, but in the end it also gives the painting an air of tension between light and dark, death and life.

Details here…

Remembering Dinner with Friends

april — Thu, 11 May 2006 14:40:08 +0000

My muse, sitting next to me at dinner last week, knocked over and broke this lovely delicate wine glass. My hosts allowed me to bring it home for portrait painting. Here’s its first, on brown. I think there will be more paintings of this glass, as it travels around in the world, seeing new places and trying new things.

More info here.

bananas on red silk

april — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 23:18:09 +0000

The bananas have drawn me back. This bunch was pretty green still when they got painted. They posed on red silk for their portrait, with light coming in the window from behind. Maybe I’ll do a dead banana peel, too. Stages in a banana’s life. Anyway, these bananas on red are on a 12 x 9 canvas board. For sale.

More info ….

These shoes are for walking

april — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 13:23:15 +0000

These shoes have seen hundreds of miles in the past 3 years. Here they are posing on the floor, kind of like a Van Gogh painting in my calendar, but his shoes are brown. The challenge for this painting was the light — the lamp was on the shoes, and only a small amount of meagre rainy-day light fell through the window onto my canvas. This painting is for sale here.

second figure – two

april — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 23:06:47 +0000

I had some more time to spend working on this piece that I started last week. I developed the face quite a bit and warmed up the body a bit. She still looks a bit 1920s to me. I think she may still need some work … she’s got to sit for a bit.

second figure – step 1

april — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 17:40:33 +0000

Last night I started this figure painting; next week I hope to spend another 3-4 hours on it and get it all finished up. Right now, she’s got a blueish grey background, but I’m thinking I’ll change it to something more racy, something bright.

Here’s a full view.

five tomatoes

april — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 18:56:54 +0000

The tomatoes and I had a plan for Tuesday. We talked about it on Sunday and we talked about it on Monday. Tuesday when we sat down together, we discovered that three of the tomatoes had been eaten! But the spirit of the five is still in the painting.

More info…