There are so many great places to paint on site in Boston, especially on a rainy Saturday. With the warmer weather,  I have put the studio work aside and am traveling around and painting on location.

This work is refreshing and a needed balance to the larger, winter, studio paintings I have been finishing recently.  I am trying to balance the existing work with these new pieces, balance the inside paintings with working outside now.

This is a photo of a roughed-in start. The third painting of a new Boston Waterfront Series  I’ve begun for my late summer show “The Bean and the Cod ” in Orleans at the Elizabeth Rowley Gallery.

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.

The wind, the bugs, the tourists; what fun!  The days where your canvas focal point sails away from the pier mid- painting.  The days where your painting goes bad with the enthralled crowd behind you wondering where is she looking?

But you keep working, scraping down, rubbing out, wiping,  fighting with the oils till finally…  you think, to heck with it. Why don’t I just wipe it out right here? Save this canvas for another day.

But don’t.

Never, ever, wipe your painting out while on location. Because, your art will never compare while you are still outside. Nature will always win. Wait, and take it home to the studio. I guarantee it will look better.  Take it inside and study it then. Often times you will be pleasantly surprised with the days efforts.

Boston: Charles River Study on location.

I met  tourists from South Korea, avoided joggers and watched MIT students lunch.  Boston, it’s all there.

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I was going to just post this recent shot of my studio without comment. Because I just really want to get painting this morning. Then I thought, most people are not used to seeing this kind of organized chaos. Maybe a short post would be more sufficient.

It looks like this, because I always walk past the files, books, and notes to head right for the palette. The other things are not important,  not really.

What’s important, is the work.  Is there enough paint on the palette? Am I working on the same painting that is still on the easel from yesterday?

I will look around the studio and contemplate which painting has the best chance for  improvement  right now.  What painting do I have the answers for this dark morning?   A storm off the coast,  and a  final Sox score not worth reading. I am not painting Fenway today.

See the thing about painting landscapes is, in a moment ,  I am going to walk into that studio and  put something on the big easel and it will take me right away. My imagination leaves stormy Cape Cod for wherever that piece is.

It might be the Left Bank this morning along the Seine.  It might be Menemsha, or Brooklyn Heights.  Or maybe I will go in there and really get everything organized for once.

No, not today.

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These images are of a new painting in progress, inspired from last Saturdays game. I drew it in and let it set up- to dry, for a few days before working back into it.

I like to try and treat the painting loosely adding a lot of color right away to get the feel of the “Fenway Game Day Vibe.” Later on I will be painting in the signs of new Bleacher Bar, and The House of Blues under their big red heart which seems appropriately hanging over Lansdowne Street.

I laid this whole painting in on Ustream.tv yesterday morning by the way.

This painting is now complete and available at the Rowley Gallery.

I have gotten used to looking like an idiot  while taking  my photos a long time ago. So when I go to Fenway and stand in the street framing my reference shots for my paintings, if I am stopping traffic, well…then I am stopping traffic.

I do this alone. Whoever I go with I just say, catch you in a little bit;  meet you inside. While I go off and try and frame up the best compositions of the most festive of Boston neighborhoods.

Fenway was beautiful yesterday with the threat of rain that never came. Everyone outside Fenway Park looks so familiar to me. Like it’s the same crowd at every game I have ever gone to. The same crowd that I paint in all my Fenway paintings.  These are my peeps and I am here among ” The Nation.”

I listen as Dad after Dad bring there little ones over to the condiments where I am pausing and say  “look, this is the mustard, this is the best part.”  The air is thick with the smells of hot dogs, sausage and peppers and people are drinking in the streets which I  still  cannot get used to. I really like what they have done outside here. It was just a few years ago, we were dodging cars on Yawkey Way. Now it’s all festive galore with red everywhere. With as many t-shirts professing their love of the Red Sox as their distaste for the pinstripes.

I move away from the mustard and look for some smokers to stand by and smell the  forbidden aroma. Cigarettes, sausage and the announcer’s voice starts from within the hallowed walls, that sound calling me into the game, where the views just improve.

2009 0il 12″x 20″  Center Field Fenway Park, by Loretta Feeney

On the warmest day of the year, as I write at my kitchen table,  the  Red Sox have won nine games in a row.

My life is revolving around their schedule. I don’t have to watch them on television, but I love to listen to them.  Our third baseman has the made the transition to first in more ways than one. Cleaning up the batting  order and leading this edgy team onward and upward. And it’s only April.

This oil is on Exhibit at the Cape Cod Art Association, West Barnstable, Ma. and then will be available at Trees Place, Orleans Ma. along with other new Fenways.

When starting a painting,  being afraid to commit is a very good thing.  That is right where you want to be.  I tell my students to take their time. What is the rush to get locked in?  It’s  good  not to be able to tell a figure from a tree trunk sometimes. While laying in a new Paris painting recently I really enjoyed the slow process of the emerging figures. Two weeks into the painting now and I still have a lot of room to make changes in the placement of basically everything while I get the mood and key established.

Soft edges and mystery, that is where it’s at. Flexibility at the easel translates to a strength of options.

Don’t commit too soon.