I WORK EN PLEIN AIR, OUT IN THE COUNTRYSIDE… Welcome. I am back to painting again after a sabbatical that included a few pieces done for charitable fund raisers. I am continuing to make small, 6" x 8", landscape oils, but not every day. I am also working on larger pieces. Every time I finish a painting, I will place it here on my website. If you see something you'd like to purchase, email me. Thank you for enjoying my work and keeping me creating new pieces. Your interest stimulates and inspires me and has made me a better painter. Sign up for my emails and I will send you an image of each new painting. I love to paint and am happy to share my painting experience with you. Most of my work is impressionistic landscape oils, inspired by the beauty of the Island of Martha's Vineyard where I live.
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“November Garden”, this is a Small painting, 6″x 8″, oil on canvas panel. This painting has SOLD.
It was such a nice, warm, sunny day after about a week of gray and wind and rain. I went out on the south facing front porch and could not find a reason in the world why I would want to be anywhere else. The Hydrangeas had been beckoning me for weeks to paint them. This was their lucky day…
“Cranberry Boghouse”, this is a Small painting, 6″x 8″, oil on canvas panel. This painting has SOLD.
Having driven past this dilapidated boghouse innumerable times, I had never stopped to really look at it. For a few years a non-profit group, the Vineyard Open Land Foundation , has been clearing out and rejuvenating the cranberry bog behind the house. Thus the view has been getting more enticing to stop and paint. I photographed it one day last week to study the possibilities. It was the rain today which made me stop. The wetness had caused the whole foreground to intensify in color values. The contrast with the misty background tree row became much more intense than it is on a dry day. It being near today’s almost non existent sunset light pushed the colors that much more…
“Fit to be Tide”, this is a Small painting, 6″x 8″, oil on canvas panel. This painting has SOLD.
A boat still in the water this time of year becomes a rarity. A flat bottom pond skiff, painted blue, and still in the water is exceptional…
“High Tide”, this is a Small painting, 6″x 8″, oil on canvas panel. This painting has SOLD.
To capture this view in my painting, I had to climb an outdoor spiral stairs to get to the roof deck on some celebrity’s house. Luckily, they weren’t home at the time as I was followed up the stairs by a Boykin Spaniel, an Australian Cattle Dog and an accomplished student painter. The availability of this view will not exist in a few more weeks. One of my contractor friends who is moving this house back from the face of the cliff below allowed me to do some works here before the move starts. I had scouted this view a month ago and realized it would only work as a morning painting with shadows still on the cliff face in the distance…
“Storm Light”, this is a Small painting, 6″x 8″, oil on canvas panel. This painting has SOLD.
This painting required a windless day for me to be able to stand out on the observation area on top of the Gay Head Cliffs. I was also able to view the approaching rain storm behind me as it blew in from the west. But my vantage point did me no good. The rain came in faster than I had anticipated. I got wet while packing up my equipment for the hasty retreat back to the parking lot. However, it was such a great day and place to paint that I returned and did a second painting around sunset…
“Boundary”, this is a Small painting, 6″x 8″, oil on canvas panel. This painting has SOLD.
A fall colored salt marsh on the south side of the pond. At a very high tide, this whole area of grass is covered with water. I love the absolute flatness of the marshes compared to the rills and rolls of the adjacent hilsides. But it takes the autumn colorations to really make them striking…
“Marsh Meadow”, this is a Small painting, 6″x 8″, oil on canvas panel. This painting has SOLD.
This salt marsh I pass by on the way to more favorite locations. Yet I always see it beckoning me as I drive or walk past. When the grasses in its meadow turn the burnt orange green of fall I can resist the call no more. The Great Blue Heron tires of hiding in front of me as I stand at my easel. He croaks his spooky call and slowly with majestic effort rises up and off to an even safer haven. The tiny deer tick slowly wander up the folds of my clothing to look for lunch, for I am on an active deer path. While swatting at the more persistant flying evil, I spot the slower climbers and pluck them off and into the oblivion of the dense jumble of undergrowth. And once again it is a joy to be out in this wild beauty…
“Awaiting Your Pleasure”, this is a Small painting, 6″x 8″, oil on canvas panel. $750.00 USD
At the far edge of the pond my friend had left her little dingy out after leaving for the winter. Lucky for me! It is irresistible to my painter’s eye with it’s vibrant blue seats and clean white colors against the fading fall scenery…
“Yonder Menemsha”, this is a Small painting, 6″x 8″, oil on canvas panel. This painting has SOLD.
I climbed to pond level from the overlook parking area above. In scouting the shoreline for “my” spot, I found a private path leading down from a summer home. As I set up easel and gear, I looked around and realized I had a perfect view diagonally across the pond to Menemsha. The sun was low and reflectively gleaming off the white Menemsha Coast Guard Station buildings, making them exceedingly visible from my distant location. The marsh grasses and all other vegetation have donned their Autumn mantle of multi colors. With the looming shadow from the hill behind creeping forward, I was rewarded with muted colors in contrast to the sun-streaked highlights on the near shore. A small dingy drifted by with its lone occupant so intent on dip-netting for bay scallops, that he never even saw me painting not 25 feet away…
“Shadows Fall”, this is a Small painting, 6″x 8″, oil on canvas panel. This painting has SOLD.
Drama at the end of a day always strikes my fancy. The hardest thing is to know that it is coming and to place myself in a good location to take full advantage of it without being repetitious. Some evenings, I get all set up and the drama never comes. Other times I am just too late to capture it, or in the wrong place…