The sky’s the limit

Coming home from Puerto Rico, 6x4" watercolor

I’m lost in thoughts of the massacre in Colorado and a graveside memorial I’ll be attending in just a couple of hours. Words really are inadequate and sometimes inappropriate. I will not tell my nephew that although he’s lost his 91-year-old grandmother, there are people today whose feelings of loss are more acute.

Above is a little watercolor I did on my way back from a wedding in Puerto Rico. I’m not the first artist that noticed looking down at the clouds is indeed spectacular. In fact, I know that Georgia O’Keefe’s Sky Above Clouds paintings were probably the trigger that inspired me to paint this little scene. I know of one other living painter/sketcher who will attempt to capture anything, anywhere. Raynald Murphy is an artist in Montreal, Canada. Both of us have sketched passing scenes from the passenger seat of automobiles. Not crazy, just passionate.

What is a sketch but a moment's passion, searching for the truth. 

(Stephen Aitken)

Binging on plein air

Red truck, 8x10" oil on panel

At the crack of dawn this morning I went for the second time to a sunflower field near Kinston, NC to paint with studio mate and painting buddy Robert. I’ll maybe share that painting on Sunday in my weekly Behr Path newsletter. Arriving back in Goldsboro, I drove by an amazingly red pick up truck parked near some pink and fuchsia crepe myrtles.

Painting Andy’s on a rainy day

I finished two commissioned oils last weekend, and came down with a miserable case of cabin fever. I still have more than a dozen paintings I’ve been asked to do. Five of them will allow me to paint en plein air. The others, four watercolors and three to five oil paintings, will need to be done from photos. This does not lend itself to fresh air and sunshine, two things to which I’ve become addicted. So, realizing that a good state of mind will lend itself well to the work in front of me, yesterday I went out in the rain and painted Andy Griffith’s old apartment. Click to see Andy Griffith lived upstairs.