Watercolor

FLOWERS

Flowers, often at the ready, offer themselves as models; graceful and colorful, complex and always passionate.

.

DRINK AND DRAW

You can’t do it alone. Sharing my work with others is critical to staying sane.

I deeply value my artist friends. Here are two of them who participate in “Drink and Draw” at Vasac.

Falal Booty, Roller Derby Doll, 16×20

Stephan Gardner, Chairman of D&D, 16×20

Getting By With a Little Help From My Friends

Moving beyond studies, these paintings ultimately feel like an enriching conversation with Cezanne and Sargent. Copying an oil painting pushes me to do new things with the watercolor.

A Bit More of Tulum.

A few more from this amazing place. Planted on a lounge chair these are various views of the beach directly in front of me, including hats, shells and rooms keys. Painting like this, directly and composing art from what is right in front of me is exhilarating and has it’s own type of romantic honesty.

The last two pieces were planned as a spread but I also wanted them to work as a singular image. Here they are stretched as one image but without the spiral of my sketchbook.

Tulum, Mexico.

I’ve always been fascinated by travel notebooks and journals. Still, in 2010, I think about the journals of John Dunbar and the movie Dances With Wolves. My spirit is lifted re-imagining his journey to the fringe of western culture and his gradual but final rebirth as a native. Similarly effecting me, is the Tahiti journal of Paul Gaugin and the story of  his escape to the savage while in search of the truth in art, and within himself. Homer’s work, too, is journalistic and deals with the dark power of nature, life and death, man’s primal instincts and survival. Hopper works in an opposite way . . . every painting a self portrait, a journal of a man longing to be liberated from his closeted self.

I couldn’t help but think about the savage, the dark, the fringe, the native, while in Tulum, Mexico. At times, Tulum feels only marginally settled. Nature reigns. The sun, the heat, the salt, the wind; the elements are always a factor. Electricity is spare. Bottle water only. The animals are prehistoric; lizards, pelicans, toads and giant sea turtles that have been using the Tulum’s beaches to nest for tens of millions of years.

Below are four watercolor sketches that although colorful reflect some of the “primitive” that I experienced while vacationing in Tulum. It’s certainly worthy of another trip and another focused musing on these wild themes.

The Fourth With The Family

Below and above are a few observations I made while visiting with my family over the Fourth of July, Independence Day.  What a worth while thing to celebrate.