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Sunday, November 8, 2015

Practicality.........where am I?


I was outside a couple weeks ago with two friends, also painters. I have known them since art school, yes, 40 years ago. Anyhow, I drove to meet them in the south suburbs of Chicago to go painting in the woodlands there. One of my friends drove to this location and we split up and started to paint. Once I started my first effort I knew it was a disaster in the making, so I scraped it off and then began this one....a tree study. I knew there was about an hour's light left and had to hurry. the light changed fast and I was left with a tree in shadow, not the light I began with. Basically I have here a drawing done with a brush and a few colors. The point is....in all PRACTICALITY I will not be finishing this one because it's unlikely that I could find my way back to this spot without my friends and couldn't do this until fall of next year anyway. Now this all brings me to a story about practicality......I once was working as an artist with a another friend who drove us to somewhere outside of Chicago to a film studio where we were going to photograph the art we'd done. Over the course of the day, I was getting really angry at my partner when I just could no longer take it and was ready to walk out the door telling him "I quit". Now, I realized in that moment that I was in a location I didn't know and with no idea how to get home on my own..... I stayed. That was practicality in action that day. A couple years later I did quit and found my way home. The moral of the story.....drive yourself.

Friday, November 6, 2015

Wilson's.....a plein air watercolor


This is a small watercolor I did sitting across the street from Wilson's, a classic old Door County landmark in Ephraim, Wisconsin. Ice cream and hamburgers. I was not feeling well this summer and didn't think I'd like to stand up for over an hour so I took my little watercolor kit and sat in the grass.