Mt. Lamb, 7" x 8″, oil on panel
It's been another summer. I made some paintings. I banged through the dirt on my motorcycle on a trip to Wyoming. I enjoyed the company of my dear wife, off from her teaching duties. I dug large holes - real holes in real earth - with my parents. I had work hanging in a fine gallery in Maine. I started relationships with new galleries. And I started it all with the loss of my beloved grandmother (Goodbye Angela).
Somewhere in northwestern Wyoming
It isn't a cliche to say that losses spur reflection and reconsideration. Aside from the larger questions of life, I took a step back and reconsidered the figurative work I'd been staring down off and on for months. I realized that I'd been opening the refrigerator door again and again absurdly expecting that one time a roast beef sandwich would magically appear. We forget the work that goes into putting that sandwich in there in the first place. So I set aside the people and went back into the landscape. This was the landscape that upon the motorcycle I'd spent so many miles in. The barns and houses hugged in broad expanses of wheat under an infinite sky. Recreated from sketches and photos, they aren't as easy as I might hope, but the reward is there in the geometry and refreshing colors. This is a taste.
Taste. I was hungry for the chewy certainty of the still lives.
Thick Lamb Chop, 8" x 8″, oil on panel
Every year, as my wife heads back to work and I approach another birthday, I say that this is the year I take over the planet. This time I mean it. But I'll settle for the western hemisphere. There are shows coming up, studio tours and a more ... soon.
