the red tree

Allright, I am done in the garden. Here is the result of a lot of work.






It's beautiful, isn't it? Looks very roman to me. But it is done, and all the plants are in the ground, so there is nothing left to do except water occasionally. I have begun making the canvases and panels for the next series of paintings, and by next week should be back in the saddle again.

I don't know why the tree trunk is painted red. It was that way when we bought the house.
Strange, no?

Happy cambodian new year!

According to my neighbors, the Khmer Buddhist Temple, it is the new year. It is a week of celebrations and bright banners. I went over yesterday and had some BBQ.




They have this cool shrine up on top of the hill with incense and paper prayer flags, that have something to do with the spirits of departed ones, or so it was explained to me.




I have been conspicuously absent from this blog, and from my studio as well. I took a month off of painting to do some garden work. The one month turned into two, as there is soooo much in that backyard that needs to be done...




It's a huge backyard that was wilderness when we bought the house. My wife has taken the front yard as her territory, and left me the backyard as mine. The backyard is mostly all shade, and she likes flowers and bright spaces. I prefer forests and shade plants, so it works out for us in a Jack Sprat kinda way. (I grew up in Los Angeles, and i think that's enough sun and heat to last me for one lifetime.) Spring has come with a wild, hedonistic blast of warm weather. Everything is growing now. My ferns...




And one of my favorite flowers, trillium...




Bit by bit, i have fought back the ivy and the blackberries and carved out some space for my ferns and poplars, which i have just planted. In a way, i am trying to re-forest this hillside. I have a long way to go before i reach my ultimate vision of what it should be, but it's definitely a good start.



Jonah came down to give me a hand. He wasn't much help, though.



Within a couple of weeks i will call it quits in the backyard and get back to the business of painting. I have decided to ease up on the one show a year schedule, as that last one was a bit too much stress for me. I will not be showing for at least another 15 months. Till then, i have some canvases to stretch and some dandelions to weed.

On a last note, i have had several more sales since the show went down, including one from my new Dallas gallery. Good news just in time for taxes.

Wishing you all a happy spring.

Whitewashed

One of my post-show rituals is to re-paint my studio. It gets pretty dirty as the year goes on, and this is kind of a cleansing for me, a tabula rasa, so to speak.



That's about all i have done in there lately. I have been getting ready to stretch some new canvases and start up all over again, but this is my downtime after all that stress. I have also caught this monster flu that my darling boy brought home with him and left me bedridden for two days. Not pretty, let me tell you.

Whenever people come to my studio for the first time, they are always drawn to my bulletin board, which i have covered with all sorts of inspirational material and ideas over the years. There are ideas for things that i have been meaning to get around to for a long time. It's sort of a cross section of my head at different times....





There is a story behind every picture here. I will select but one and tell you about it. Here is one, a terrible image of it, but you can get the idea....




Pardon the paint splatters on it. It's a photo i took of a lily pond years ago. It's without a doubt the best photo i have ever taken. It has in this simple photo all the qualities that i strive to put into my paintings. One simple photo taken on a cheap disposable camera, and yet it succeeds where so many paintings i have labored over for months fail. One of these days i will get a better image of it up here, and you will see what i mean. By the way, here is a fun trivia game. See if you can name two of the famous painters i have represented on my bulletin board. There are at least six visible ones in the two photos above. No prizes, sorry.

sunshine

The last few days have been lovely and warm. Very unusual for a seattle winter. I took Jonah out to the park for a stroll. He is a bit sick, hence the cranky expression on his face.




And another sale from the show. This one:



I was quite fond of this one. It's entitled "One thing stands for any other thing". Not too bad so far. We will see how this month goes.

sunday

So i know i said i would take pictures of the opening, but i forgot. And so did my wife. So you will have to rely on my powers of description. It was fun, and i did get a little tipsy on the cheap wine. Lots of nice comments, but only ONE sale, which is rather disappointing. I suppose i can't expect the show to sell out in one night. I know the size of most of these pieces is out of most people's range, but a few more sales would have been nice. Hopefully more will sell in the month it is up. I did get a write-up in the Seattle PI, which was nice except they compared me to Darren Waterston, who is a great painter. I know we are similar, but i would like to shake that comparison. And i met another great painter who showed up, and is dating a friend of my wife's. Maija Fiebig. Look her up. So it was fun. Now i will devote this month to gardening.

Here is a picture, just to put something up. It is my favorite piece in the show. I think i hit on something that i have been struggling toward for a while. I am happy with it. It's called "Rain Messages".

hung

The paintings are up on the walls of the gallery.






It's a relief to have them up there. I plan on being drunk for the whole opening.

finished

Here it is, the final piece for the show, finished but a day before they are hung on the gallery walls. Most of you will not be able to see much difference between what it looked like yesterday and now. But i can tell the difference.





This piece is titled "propped up by ruins". I choose my titles only after the piece is done. It's bad luck for me to do otherwise. My titles are all cribbed from whatever author i happen to be fond of at t he moment. Last year i borrowed heavily from Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, which if you have not read, you should. I could rave about it for pages, but suffice to say that i believe it is a modern classic, right up there with Moby Dick. This year's titles came from a book of poems called The sleep of four cities, by Jen Currin, a friend of mine. Her poems are beautiful.

So that's it for now. I hang the show tomorrow, and then i take a little time off to get my garden ready for spring. Maybe i will take a break with some watercolors...

I leave you with this image:




This is a photo i cut from an old national geographic. I have it up on my bulletin board in my studio. It was taken by a man who was photographing mount saint helen's erupting. He was too close and was killed by the blast. When they retrieved his body, they developed the film in the camera. This was one of the last pictures on the roll. I have been trying in vain for years to create something this beautiful.