"Life Is Art"

"Hard Times For Traveling"

2011-08-03T22:02:00.000-06:00

Latest painting. Available at Trailside Galleries in Jackson Hole, Wyoming

For info contact www.trailsidegalleries.com

Painting is 30" x 48"

2011-07-25T14:55:00.002-06:00

A few more from Jackson Hole!

A few pics from my quick trip to Jackson Hole!

2011-07-25T14:52:00.003-06:00

This beautiful mother grizzly is known as No. 399. She is known for raising her cubs near the Jackson Lake area in Jackson Hole. Some think she raises them there because she knows it is more populated and thus less likely to have male grizzlies frequenting the area. The males are dangerous to cubs. I had a great evening and then the following morning of watching and photographing this awesome family of bears.

2011-07-25T14:48:00.000-06:00

A few new paintings!

" The Wanderers Come Home "

" Looking For Spring "

" A Passing Visit "

Hi again, oh so neglected blog. Here are a few new paintings, two of which were inspired by our trip to Devon and Cornwall last summer. The sheep in the doorway belong to our neighbor down the road. We pass them often, and they like to stand in the doorway of the barn watching the passersby. But I think that about February, they are just looking out wondering when this darn cold weather is going to be done.

Our painting trip to Southwest England!

2011-04-25T21:26:00.001-06:00

With spring showing intermittent signs of actually coming here in Midway, I keep thinking about our trip to Devon and Cornwall in England last year in late May/June. I thought I'd share a few of the studies I did on the trip. We found very reasonable cottages on farms and in villages where we stayed for a week at a time. It turned out to be our favorite trip ever, I think. It is so nice to take enough time in one place to get to know people and get a feel for the life there. The area called Dartmoor is a national park in Devon. It is covered with high wild moors and beautifully preserved villages tucked in the valleys. Nearly all the roads are single lane lined by rock walls and hedges. The farms are beautifully kept and the villages are ancient rock with many thatched roofs. Wild ponies and cows and sheep wander not only the moors but also the roads and village squares. We met many wonderful local people who took us in and showed us their farms and let me paint and photograph as I pleased. We spent one of the weeks on a farm on the Cornwall coast and attended the huge Royal Cornwall Agricultural Show for two or three days. All the horses and farm animals I could ever want to see. It was a dream for an artist that loves rural life. There is really something very special about the way the English love their history and their countryside and it's way of life. As I've always tried to convey in my art, just having the chance to be around farms and the rural lifestyle has a wonderful way of bringing peace and helping us appreciate our natural connection to nature and the earth. These places help us remember that our lives depend on what we grow in the fields and how we need a healthy vibrant countryside to have a healthy vibrant country. I hope to go back to Devon and Cornwall someday soon. There will definitely be more paintings coming of the people and countryside there.

Some recent paintings!

2011-03-11T14:00:00.001-07:00

Finally I get back to the blog! Sorry for the delay. I am going to try harder to get to this more often. I'm working hard so I will have more paintings to show in the near future. Hope you are having a nice March. Spring is definitely showing signs of arriving here in Midway. It's almost shirtsleeve weather today. I don't even have titles figured out yet for all these paintings.

Here's my little quote for the day. I just forget to listen sometimes.

“I learned that inspiration does not always come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic, striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time. ”

Brenda Ueland (1891-1985);

Journalist, editor, teacher

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-24T11:44:00.000-07:00

Smile!

2010-12-23T13:52:00.002-07:00

"Follow Me" by Robert Duncan 2010

“A smile is the light in your window that tells others that there is a caring, sharing person inside"

Dennis Waitley (born 1933); writer

"December in the Country"

2010-12-21T11:33:00.010-07:00

This is a painting I finished recently. Last December Linda and I spent ten days or so just before Christmas in Vermont. Just as we arrived, a beautiful snow storm hit, turning Vermont into a storybook Country Christmas. We had the chance to stay with our friends, the Dunkle Family, near the beautiful village of Tunbridge. This painting looks down on the farm next to the Dunkles and their farm just in the backround. The whole scene struck me as an ideal scene of " December in the Country ", with all the attendant memories that many of us have of pulling our sled and gathering brothers, sisters and friends, along with the dogs and heading to the nearest hill to race down through the snow. Now we do it with lots of grandkids. Good times!

I've been painting Vermont quite a bit over the last few years and love having an excuse to spend time there. I've always felt that we can save the things we really love, for future generations if we really make our mind up to do whatever it takes and pay whatever price we have to, if it is worth it. And Vermont represents to me a place where people have tried to do that. They seem to have decided that small farms and small villages and the country lifestyle were worth holding onto, and worth passing on to generations to come. So they've paid the price of not having a Walmart in every nearby town and not taking the best offer from every developer that wanted to plant the newest Country Acres Subdivision. And I admire them for it. It is cold, hard place in the winter, but I have met some wonderful warm people there and I'm grateful for them and all those who work so hard to keep small farms and small towns alive.

Merry Christmas and thanks to all who support the arts! And thanks to the Dunkles for the wonderful hospitality last December.

Welcome to my art blog!!

2010-10-07T16:13:00.001-06:00

This is my first little attempt at blogging. I want to just share a few thoughts about life as an artist, and as a person trying to balance my love of life and family with this addiction that is art. There are a few quotes I found early on in my art career that have stayed with me and helped me in forming the compass that I have used to guide the choices that I have made at important turning points, as well as in the choices I've made in deciding what I am going to paint next.

One of the books I found that I loved very much was a collection of letters by the great American artist N. C. Wyeth to his mother when he was just getting started as an artist. One thing he said had a real impact on me. He said " The genuineness of the artists' work depends on the genuineness of the artists' living. In other words, art is not what you do, it is what you are. We cannot in art produce a fraction more than what we are."

Another amazing illustrator from the same time period as Wyeth was Harvey Dunn. Dunn was also a wonderful and tough teacher who spoke very directly. He said in his classes " If your life is full , you'll paint full pictures. If it is empty, your pictures will be empty too!

These two men not only painted powerful paintings that even today continue to inspire people but they lived lives that touched countless admirers and friends. I watched a wonderful documentary about N. C. Wyeth and his relationship with his children who all went on to become noted artists, musicians and inventors. I was so moved by how deeply he treasured each of his children and his wife and how they and his art didn't seem to occupy different spheres of his life, but all seemed to be be weaved together to make a meaningful life. And Dunn was also wonderful family man who was a huge influence on his students, many of which went on to be famous artists and illustrators. John Clymer was a member of the Illustrators Hall of Fame and later one of our greatest western painters who took me under his wing early in my career and was so kind to help me see what it really meant to be an artist. John was a student of both Wyeth and Dunn. When he spoke of Dunn's classes tears would pour out and it became hard for John to speak.

So these three great artists and great men taught me something that has stayed with me all these nearly forty years of painting. They taught me that life, career and family were tied together in a way that could benefit and make each richer. And I feel that it was a lesson that has proven right. And so I guess it probably has a lot to do with why I chose to include my family in so much of my subject matter. And that choice has truly made my life richer. I have to admit that I haven't always succeeded in balancing the things that were important but I'm so grateful that I was introduced to these men early in my career and for how that has always given me something to shoot for. It helped me to see that taking time to go for a bike ride with the kids or going for our walks to the river or a thousand other things we found to do usually not only brought us closer but left me inspired with new ideas for paintings. There are a lot of very talented painters coming up in the art world right now that I admire a lot but if there is one thing I feel would make their art more meaningful it would be to follow Wyeth and Dunn's advice and put more of themselves into their art and to fill their lives with rich experiences that bring about inspiration naturally.

As another great artist named John Carlson wrote " A picture is a work of art, not because it is " Modern" nor because it is " Ancient " but because it is a sincere expression of the human heart."