New Work Available

 I have some new work available as prints and on products at Pixels/FineArtAmerica. Take a look at a few of the options here:

Framed Print

Canvas Print

Metal Print

Framed Print

Acrylic Print

Wood Print

Tote Bag

Carry-all Pouch

Shower Curtain

Throw Pillow (cover)

Enjoy! Thanks for visiting.

My Jeans

 When people see my jeans all covered in paint, they say "You could get a lot of money for those". Now is our chance to see if that is true. I am raffling a unique artifact - jeans bearing evidence of my painterly life - to raise money for the Rupert Village Trust, a non-profit of which I am a founding board member.

Buy raffle tickets here. Note that your credit card statement will show Rupert Village Trust as the vendor, not me personally.

Check out the jeans:

Cut them up and make a Painter's Tote Bag or decorative pillow.

Display them on a wall, or use them to build a scarecrow.

I have another pair, always, in the works.

You could cut out the colorful part and sew them onto your own jeans.

 We formed the Rupert Village Trust in order to save an old general store building and make it into a café and community center. Rupert is a tiny, but spread out, rural town in southwestern Vermont, population just over 700. The Sheldon Store Café and Community Center will add significantly to the social infrastructure of the Town. Thanks for visiting!

Thoughts on Composition

Often composition is equated to planning, as if you could compose first (i.e. plan out the painting) and then paint, or execute the plan. Some artists and teachers use the terms Design and Composition interchangeably,both meaning to plan. And this approach works for many artists, but not for me. 

Take a look at my Technique Takeaway coming up, Composition as Process.

 

Pink Shape, 9x12"

 

This sense of composition may be analogous to a piece of music that is written out before it is played, a music composition. The way that I paint is more like an improvised solo - I make it up as I go along. But that does not mean that it not a composition. 

 

Stripe Collage #4, 11x14", "You can't make this stuff up"; well, yes, you can. What you can't do is plan a piece that ends up like this one. You have to find it in the process of making it.

 

Throughout my process of painting, I am engaged in the act of composing. The visual elements and their relationships to one another change many times during the course of creating a painting. The composition is in constant flux until it isn’t. The composition of the finished painting (if it finishes, which not all my paintings do), is an unknown until it reveals itself through the process of composing. 

Sunshine Stripes, 11x14", Even a very structured composition goes through many changes in its evolution towards a finished piece. Sometimes people mistake structure for planning.

18"x24"

Rising by the Second, 20x20"