Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

This is a new ski study.

This is where I want to be, heading down the Great Northern Trail. It is that time of year.

Actually,  I painted it last winter and put it away in a safe place.  Now (that I found it) it is up -front in my studio where I can live with it for a little while.

There are a million subjects for an artist like me, in a place like this.  There are dozens of trails, with dozens of angles and vistas to catch. On top of that, the light in the mountains changes quickly in the short days.  It’s cold, but it’s worth it, Vermont.  I can still see the coyote tracks in the  snow, from the lift, as I went up.

I seized them greedily, as this picture displays. Yes, they break but I like the weight of them. I like that they were eaten off of by my aunt for years. Now they live in the studio and soon a couple small plates will make it to Dublin in my paint box for a trip abroad.

Have you seen what they are selling in art stores for palettes?  What  a waste of money. Round plastic saucers with no place to mix your colors.

This shot is of my easel and the bottom of a Manhattan painting in progress. With the display of my aunts dishes, which mirror this paintings colors. To me it displays a comfort zone of a work station showing studio tools of the trade.

By Monday I will be in Ireland with my portable studio, ready to work under unforeseeable conditions and subjects.

I am still young enough to hike around the moors and go trespassing, after a long day of driving on the other side of the road. It will not be a successful painting trip, till some farmer hollers at me from across his field. These trips are all about pushing it and getting out of your comfort zone, and having fun.

I will be posting from Ireland about this trip, my fifth here and most likely my last last to the Emerald Island.  The world is so big and there is so much to see.

Many of my students come to me after full successful careers in other fields. These special students have been painting in their minds for years, getting ready to begin. I am often  amazed at how quickly they learn the basics and can begin creating paintings in their own unique style.

I just lost one such student; Herb Donlan. Herb was late for every one of my classes. He tried to slip olive oil by me one day when he ran out of linseed oil. He brought the smelly raw turpentine to class and made us all ill. Every week he forgot at least one crucial tool for painting and had to borrow from someone.  But every week he brought in new work from home and every week we all could see the progress and effort this disorganized late bloomer displayed. He got better and better. He worked harder and harder. He traveled and studied art museums  abroad, showed his paintings locally, and matured as an artist.

Sometimes with my students I see such great emerging  potential and talent that has been waiting to come out and it’s very satisfying for all of us.  Sometimes I see my students’ paintings  improve and think if they had just started earlier…

The truth is we all have a finite number of paintings to paint in this life. It’s all about quality not quantity anyway.

It’s all about doing the best work you can and getting out of your comfort zone at the easel .

The lesson here for all of us is that if you are thinking of ever painting, if you are thinking of beginning to get serious about doing the art you have been dreaming about and imagining, NOW is the time to begin.  Don’t wait.

Most people that have been thinking about painting for years are so ready to make the commitment, they turn out to be very strong students and painters like  Herb, and maybe you?

It’s a small show of recent paintings done on location around the Hub, in what I  think of as unusual views of familiar motifs such as the Customs House Tower,  featured in this Boston skyline painting .

There is also a new ” Night Barges, Paris”  oil and a  “Oyster Shacks” painting  from this summers on location Chatham Ma. efforts.  The hurricane should be long gone, but come get blown away anyway.

There are probably a lot of artists out there that hide their art too.  There is something very refreshing about putting new work away, out of site, out of reach, out of mind, whether you are really conscious of it or not.  Before you know it you are busy on something else, then something else, and then one random morning you are holding  a new  French study that hasn’t been seen in four years. That’s what happened to me recently.

I was busy doing something in the studio and I came across this small study, and immediately I knew it was  from Sarlat in the Dordogne  region.  It’s funny how you can lose a whole painting for four years but remember precisely how you painted it that morning. It was misty and damp. I headed right out to paint first thing, finding a view,  working just off of one of the main roads leading into this Medieval town.  It was beautiful out, distant smoke and  rolling small farms.

But my study did not go so well. When your work doesn’t go well it usually means you don’t know what you are doing or you just can’t fix it  then. Sometimes it can be hard to paint on location when the view in front of you, everywhere around you looks so foreign and rich. When I came back to Massachusetts from France I put it away out of view.

So it was very cool to find this hidden study left in its state of discontent.

This was painted in France on a historic morning in my life. This day I realized granola tastes just fine without the milk. You can eat it right out of the box driving down the road looking for a strong place to work. When I found this small oil waiting patiently,  I immediately wanted to paint back into it.  It came together quickly.  It’s probably been percolating in the back of my mind over many  breakfasts.

Feeney,  “Salat France”  9×12 Started on location.

Available at the Rowley Gallery.

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A  highlight-dot of color, is how I began to insert  figures into my landscapes as a focal point.  They were so vague and uncommitted, people  would ask, “is that light spot  a figure back there?”

Over the years as my oils changed to become more comfortable depicting people, the single figure is now often a part of the crowd. This has opened up interesting  subjects for me, to the point where I am a dedicated urban painter.

I like standing in the middle of a busy street taking my shots. I do. The funny thing is though, these anonymous faces are starting to feel familiar  now.I know them. When I paint my people I think about whether that  business man’s brief-case is heavy as he is  hurries to get home, trying to make that train.  I consider the window shopper and what day of the week it might be that  I am trying to capture with each piece. Your peeps will have a different vibe when you take your reference pictures on a Saturday rather than a Monday morning commute. These are all elements that are fun to consider as you work in the studio where the imagination runs away with you.

The business man that was catching the train in Paris twenty paintings ago is now following behind a woman in red, looking in vain for that particular shop on Fifth Avenue.

Paris Figures After the Rain

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Fifth Avenue Shoppers,  New York  (partial closeup)

This week opens a big show curated by the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod.

It’s billed as “A Major Exhibition of Over Fifty-Five Cape Cod Artists” shown at the Cotuit Center of the Arts. The exhibition is called First Things First.

I was free to choose any painting,  and I quickly chose a new 18×24″ canvas of  Harvard Square in Cambridge  Massachusetts.  This piece has a bit of  Out of Town News on the left side,  looking down Massachusetts  Avenue.  Actually this is one of those paintings that I thought was complete,  but chose to live with it.  After a while I knew it was not quite finished but  not sure what it needed.   I put it away out of site… for TWO YEARS!  and  forgot about it.

When I found it again recently, I knew instantly what it needed to  finish up strong.  I moved a few things around and took a bus out of the painting, and it opened up the middle to recede wonderfully.  Funny how the creative mind works.

This piece is available at the www.elizabethrowleygallery.com

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This is a oil painting of skaters on the Frog Pond near Beacon Hill. I am posting it to begin getting this site  in the Christmas season with a link to the gallery where it is available.

The Elizabeth Rowley Gallery has an opening today from 4-6pm to showcase new paintings for Christmas time.

I will be there to discuss the recent work, and the public is welcome.

My life has morphed into one big painting.  I love to examine the day to day and edit this for the canvas.  Lately I have been revisiting a favorite subject from my past.  There is a fresh renewed interest in my minds eye for… the interior, not just any interior, no,  for the PUB.

I have done a lot of research in this area, which I will dutifully continue, because it’s my job.  Seeking out the small intimate gatherings of the locals is the first step.  Framing my subject and capturing the the spirit of a place while I am there is important, so that when I am back in my studio  painting, even if it is months later, or  years, I can hear that rooms echo. Feel that days vibe.  Smell the party.

“After Work,  Brooklyn”  2009 8×10″

This is a project that is near to my heart. I grew up on the Cape to the sounds of hammers and bulldozers clearing lots in the most wonderful Chatham woods.  But it does not matter which towns you love on the Cape, the realities of over development are abundant.  Anytime the  opportunity arises to save open space we must seize it.  Please support the Barnstable Land Trust.

Please check out the BLT exhibition opening July 8, 2009 at the Cotuit Center for the Arts. I will be there. For more information about the art benefit please click here