Confederate Cemetery at Oakwood

Oakwood cemetery is located in downtown Raleigh, NC. The cemetery is hundreds of years old with a portion of it devoted to the Confederate Soldiers who served in the American Civil War. Like many military cemeteries the markers are all consistent in size and shape and geometrically uniform in how they are positioned on the ground. This aspect of the composition immediately attracted me. I have visited this cemetery several times, but this is the first I visited the area during the winter months. The lack of leaves on many of the towering trees created a beautiful background to an already interesting composition. This probably prompted me to to paint this challenging work. 

Confederate Cemetery at Oakwood - 48x36 Acrylic on Panel

Merchants Millpond State Park

In mid October we visited Merchants Millpond State Park in Northeast North Carolina. The park is a combination of a forest and swamp with hundreds of places to explore. We took a canoe out on a beautiful day and I immediately began taking pictures. The sunken cypress trees and spanish moss created beautiful pictures which opened me up to all kinds of painting possibilities.

The painting shown is the first of many that will materialize from the trip to this park. Glazing and impasto work along with vibrant colors make this work pop off the wall and come to life.

Merchants Millpond State Park #1 - 36x24" Acrylic on Canvas

The Broken Bridge

We spent our summer vacation in Cape Cod this year and stayed at our friend's house in Bourne. MA. A short walk from the house the broken bridge crosses over the inlet. This bridge has been there for over a hundred years, and at some point Grover Cleveland spent time here during his presidency.

Being the bridge was built from actual rocks the natural surfaces allowed me alot of expression in how I detailed the stones. My initial intention was to use heavy impasto work on the rocks and have them three dimensionally pop off the canvas. After painting the sky and water, I decided against this - I think my reasoning was the sunrise created a focal point and having something too abstract might deter from this.

Lately I've been doing alot of experimenting with clouds. I think the clouds in the broken bridge painting are my best effort so far. I did these by masking out several geometric shapes with tape. After this I painted the sky in hundreds of vertical bands that descended onto the sunrise. When I lifted the tape and began painting the clouds, I used the same colors as I did for the rest of the sky, but I used horizontal lines to contrast the vertical bands of the sky. This along with the white outlines provided good, but not overpowering definition for the clouds.

This work will soon be hanging at my friend's home on Cape Cod. I can now look forward to painting more works inspired by hundreds of pictures we took during our vacation.

Top of Dingman Falls

Dingman Falls is located in Northeast Pennsylvania in the Delaware Water Gap. We visited the area on a very hot day in July. I got some great pictures of the falls, but the picture I took of the river leading up to the falls struck me as rather interesting. The water was very clear, so many of the rocks at the bottom of the river could be seen through the surface. This allowed for some cool glazes with different sienna colors. I tried to make sure this looked like more than just a river - the tops and "half" trees in the right/middle portion of the canvas show that the river takes a sudden vertical drop. The last part painted was the rock bed in the lower right of the canvas. I pondered for some time on how to do this - I considered three dimensional impasto effects and more glazing, but in the end I went with a style where the details resembled the stream. The differences would be in sharp color contrasts of warm and cool colors. I think this kept some balance to the painting, while not drawing one away from other portions of the work.

Top of Dingman Falls - 24x36" Acrylic on Canvas

Kure Beach (A View from the Pier)

This is probably the most involved painting I have done up to this point in my career. The subject originated from a trip to the beach we took in early May. The summer tourist season had not yet hit so the beach was not jammed with people. I think in most cases where paintings involve people they are the main focal point, I made an effort in this painting for this not to happen. The sky, the water and the beach each have unique elements - each of the three elements of the painting were done at separate times and in a way I thought of these as three separate paintings. The people and the houses were the last parts of the paintings done. This worked out well; After I had finished the beach I was pleased with the painting, therefore I did make the people and houses deliberately complex that they might take away from the larger composition.

Despite the lengthy amount of time it took me to complete this work, I really enjoyed painting it. The color scheme is one I have rarely used and the painting techniques really allow for this to stand out. Despite the complexity of shapes I feel the painting is quite soothing and accurately displays atmosphere and time of day and year.

Kure Beach (A View from the Pier) - 40x30" Acrylic on Canvas

Rolesville and Puryear Road

Alot of the fields around my home take on some interesting colors at different points of the year. This painting is inspired from a picture I took in late October, about a month after the tobacco had been harvested. The foliage that grew in offered some spectacular colors and the fallen leaves and and the colors of autumn added to the effect.

This is painted on a 2" wide canvas so the wrap is quite interesting as the crop rows extend to all sides of the painting.

Rolesville and Puryear Road - 12x12" Acrylic on Canvas

Hanging Rock

We visited this area last Fall. After hiking several miles up we reached the top of Hanging Rock which is where I shot the picture that inspired this painting. When I began photographing the area I knew almost immediately the types of paintings I would do. The rock is so massive and the view is so spectacular it created two distinct elements that had to be separated. I decided that I would paint the rock directly on the glass and offset it about a half inch from the panel to give me some depth. I began first by painting the sky on the panel - it was not my intention to give the sky so much attention, but I found that some of the colors I was using were not giving enough vibrant punch. I knew these would be behind glass, so I needed to make the sky jump out. The mountains in the back ground are a bit more subtle but help in making the sky and the rock really come alive.

Painting on glass is always a challenge as it has no absorption. Even traditional primers like gesso do not always adhere well. Several coats of priming were used and even then the surface is still pretty tough. I painted the rock, by first using traditional heavy body acrylics in a series of color patterns. After about 8 hours the basis of the rock had formed, but the colors were not vibrant and streaked alot. I then used acryl Gouache to go back over these colors. Everything on the rock is opaque, so I did not concern myself with losing transparency by using the gouache. After doing this I again used the acryl gouache and made the patterns and symbols on the rock that are found in many of my works.

When I finally framed the piece and offset the glass from the panel got really excited from the results. The additional work and challenges of working on glass definitely paid off!.

Hanging Rock State Park - 16x20" Acrylic on Glass and Panel