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.

This is a study of Wychmere Harbor. This is just how a study of mine looks on site. Loose, heavy rich paint and soft edges.

This new painting is available.  Just email for details or contact one of my galleries.

No one likes to fly. Too many people packed into small seats, breathing recycled air.

We got to the airport early so we could get to the lounge early, eat,  relax  and listen for our boarding call. Immediately we found the convenient automated check-in for our luggage.

Only then did I learn that I was “Tagged.”

What does that mean?

It means you cannot put your luggage through early. It means you must first speak to an airline steward and then hopefully, zip, zip I’m in, I guessed.  So we were still really early and there was plenty of time to get through this check-in process.

Air Lingus opened my bags, inspected my easel, asked a lot of questions, stated how happy they were with me painting there lovely country, and sheepishly informed me there was “no way I would be boarding this flight with a box full of oil paints.”

I haggled and reasoned and pleaded to them that they certainly were not in the habit of confiscating every artist’s oil paints from all the artists like myself that travel, to paint their marvelous Island.

I reasoned all the previous times I have traveled there and other international destinations to paint on location, and no airline ever took away my paints. Or even looked twice at my cadmium and ochers . (Except for the years I painted with the big tubes of lead white which always set off the security x-ray machine alarms and they thought it was a gun.)  But even then, they just taped over the hinges of the paint box to secure it for the flights and always let me keep my lead white.

But they did take all my oils this day.

They confiscated my dangerous, toxic very expensive oil paints and they are probably sitting in some drawer somewhere being very dangerous.

But it didn’t end there. Air Lingus searched my bags again and again at every stop, before I boarded.  Then when I finally got into my seat after waiting in long now late passenger lines,  I relaxed for a minute, only to be asked to get off the plane with my bags to  meet with additional security personnel.

Here I was patted  down, apologized to, and my nearly empty carry-on searched once again.

They were so nice and let me keep my brushes and my paintings.  And actually after being searched so many times, I had to wonder while I stood there watching that last search,  how they could continually miss my palette knife and mat knife in plain site.

Dublin has more to paint then I’ll ever get to. But I try.

I was able to paint two studies on location in St. Stephens Green, going for the urban landscape.  The weather has been excellent, sunny, warm and comfortable. I have also taken a lot of photos around the city in preparation for a series of paintings I have been thinking about doing for years. These will be large major paintings for studio work.

Below is the windowsill in our B&B. When you travel and paint on location, knowing you eventually have a flight to look forward to,  everything must fit into your limited space…without sticking together. You must keep the oils in locations conducive to drying.  Keep them in the sun.

More soon from Donegal.

“Night Skaters, Boston”

Wishing everyone a happy holiday season from snowy Cape Cod.

Most of the work involves just finding the great angle and a fresh view. That means no paintings of the swan boats in the Public Garden, and no paintings of Newbury Street shops.

These paintings are started on location in about an hour and finished or cleaned up in the studio later as drying time allows. Still, the majority of these pieces are achieved on site and they have urgent  qualities that only work  done near  the city dumpsters and baby skunks can have.  Here is an oil with the first few strokes of the Boston skyline being laid in. Big simple shapes with little color initially.

I will update this post with the finished piece later this summer.

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.

sold

Today I am posting an overcast harbor scene of  Wellfleet Massachusetts, 16×20.”

I told a dealer about this piece a few months ago and was told there was no interest in anything that might reek of  inclement weather. Then I had another dealer see it and rave about how well it comes across. This made me reflect on the art market and how things have been like this since  the beginning of time. As soon as someone begins to create, there will be  someone there suggesting what you really should  be creating.

Don’t listen to them.

You’ll be at your strongest creatively,  if you paint exactly what YOU want. Your colors, your subjects,  with no regard to the market…or what might sell. This  is the only way to go.

Painting what you are excited about will get you up early and keep you up late at night in your studio.  As artists this is the ideal scenario, heading to the studio before you do anything else.

I like capturing  the rain. I like the fog and painting snow scenes too. I remember being in Times Square in the early 1980′s photographing one cold winter morning with a close family member asking  “why are you photographing this area?”  Times Square back then was a  seedy set  of peep shows, hawk shops and XXX Dancing signs everywhere. I am so glad I kept taking those shots and did not listen to anyone’s objections. Times Square does not look like that anymore and it never will again.  With my old Fuji I caught the New York of that day, a shady neighborhood on its way out and  from those photos, I painted a killer city series of  a Times Square that is long gone, and so are all those paintings.  As the fog lifts this morning I head into the studio to paint  more unpopular subjects. Can’t wait.

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

sold

Fifth Avenue Shoppers,  New York  (partial closeup)

Brittany Fr.

This is my favorite painting resulting from my time in France. It is large, and anyone interested will have to check with Celia for the exact size and price.  The wind was roaring that day and my easel flew into a ditch at one point. Fortunately, it did not hurt the oil painting. My goal was to capture the gusts of movement across the spring fields.

Here is the RSVP  link  Invitelondon09