25 Days of Minis - Study, Apollo at Night

Study, Apollo at Night
8 x 12 inch oil on panel

Today marks the first day of 25 Days of Minis. Every day through December 25, 45 artists will release a new piece. Be sure to subscribe to the Daily Digest to get the new release in your morning mailbox. It’s always great to begin your day with a selection of original artwork!

What is 25 Days of Minis? It's a well-curated group of artists who get together in December to each share one small artwork every day until Christmas - providing you with artwork sized perfectly for gifting and collecting!
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Behind the scenes, we are all working together to make amazing art, run our small businesses, help each other grow and learn, and be better artists. ⁠So many of our collectors look forward to exploring the new work each day of December - finding the beauty and inspiration of the art a welcome respite in their holiday schedule. 

 

 

Study, Apollo at Night, in a satin black frame

To kick off this year's exhibition, I'm featuring an iconic landmark from one of my favorite cities, Study, Apollo at Night (8 x 12 inch oil on panel) in Harlem. Given the year that has been, I couldn't think of a better way to start this new exhibition than with a celebration of New York City.

20 First Dates: Waiting for You

Waiting for You, 20 x 30 inch oil on panel

They say that patience is a virtue, and the next date in my series of "20 First Dates" offers this quality as well as the rich color and dynamic contrast that I love to explore with nighttime subjects the city. Waiting for You comes from a winter night in midtown Manhattan and it's a meditation on our "socially distanced" times. I understand the necessity of the sacrifices we're all making during this difficult time, yet I'm restless and anxious to get back to gathering with friends, mingling in the city, and venturing out more broadly to new places. The potential stories here are full of possibility, and I had a lot of fun painting this piece because of its vibrance and relevance to our current time. 

 Detail images of Waiting for You

 

Framed view of Waiting for You in a satin black canvas floater frame,
framed dimensions of 21.5 x 31.5 inches.

 

20 First Dates: Lyric

 

Lyric, 12 x 24 inch oil on canvas

I love to explore the pops of color from man-made lights and reflections against the backdrop of a rainy day in the city. I caught this moment along 31st Street in Manhattan, and I was drawn to the patterns of color and texture as framed by the city buildings.

When it comes to my cityscape compositions, for many years I've been fascinated by the down-the-street perspective because it affords a great way to narrow down all of the sensory overload in a place like New York City and just allow me to focus in on one key moment. In Lyric, the pedestrian with the red umbrella, surrounded by other touches of red lights and reflections, captivated me. 

 

 Detail of Lyric

I like to use the texture of the canvas to add shimmering hints of other colors around the details. 

From Sketch to Something Grander

Sapphire Night Sketch
Oil on paper, 10 x 12.5

 

Sapphire Night
Oil on panel, 20 x 30

Many years of formal training as a music performance major in college taught me the value of etudes, those brief, highly technical snippets of music that form the essential foundation of performing ensemble pieces. I carry this discipline with me today in my visual art career by creating practice runs of complex ideas via initial sketches and studies.

Sometimes it's hard for me to restrain myself because I'm so jazzed about an idea that I want to dive into a big, blank canvas and start slinging paint. But initial studies always pay dividends by allowing me to emphasize what I want to communicate and identify any potential pitfalls in my design.

Lately, I've been digging Arches oil paper for this purpose. I can focus on an idea and get the details ironed out before tackling a larger composition. Sketches, by virtue of their smaller size and confined time commitment, are less pressure packed, and often result in a fun personality that I really like.

Here are a couple of recent examples from my cityscapes featuring subjects in New York City and London. The smaller sketches are slightly different in ratio from the finished works because I originally created these as options for a client who commissioned me for a custom painting. Nonetheless, these initial studies helped me work out the ideas before scaling up to bigger versions of the motifs. I think you'll see the relationship here in the side-by-side comparisons. Enjoy!

London Twilight Sketch
Oil on paper, a10x 12.5

 

London Twilight
Oil on canvas, 32 x 48

Recent Figurative Work

I kicked off my 2017 outdoor art show season a few weeks ago with my first event in Arlington, Virginia. Since that time, I added an additional event to my schedule and I've been getting out of my studio a bit to focus on plein air landscape work as the weather improves in central Pennsylvania.

But as I head off to my second show, Art on the Square in Belleville, Illinois, I'm excited about some new figurative paintings that I will debut at this event. I'd like to share more with you about them.

Superflash 36 x 36 oil on canvas.

The first new painting is a large oil on canvas called "Superflash." I caught this individual during a beautiful, bright, sunny day in Milan, Italy. If you follow my artwork, then you know that anonymous passersby and storefront displays figure prominently in my cityscapes. I really enjoy exploring the interaction between people and mannequins or their own reflections. This motif was no exception. The bold shapes of this composition coupled with the brilliant touches of pure orange captivated me.

Come Along, Fluffy 8 x 12 oil on panel

The next new painting is much smaller, a brilliant jewel of color and energy inspired by a duo that I observed this past winter in Lower Manhattan. "Come Along, Fluffy" is my first cityscape to feature a dog, which is a little odd because I'm a fanatical dog person and I've been painting for almost 15 years now. But maybe this will be the start of something new? Stay tuned...

Arclight 20 x 30 oil on canvas

Finally, there is "Arclight," my latest interpretation of a frequent source of inspiration: Times Square in New York City. Look, you gotta understand: as a kid who grew up among the endless corn fields of southern Wisconsin, New York City was always a distant, exotic dream destination for me. Now that I live in Pennsylvania, I'm able to visit the city a few times each year. And I never tire of the ostentatious but exuberant Times Square.

Months in the Making

A crazy summer art show season is set to begin, but before diving into that, I slipped away to Philadelphia this past weekend to deliver my largest-ever painting (so far!) to a wonderful client.

"Little Italy Morning" is a 36" x 72" oil painting that grew up out of a study from Lower Manhattan that I created last year. I won't write much here, but I'll let you take a look at the time elapsed working process from start to finish, including its installation in my client's home. This was a months-long process for me, and I enjoyed the challenge of working in a large format for a cityscape. Indeed, this is one of the main reasons why I added oil painting to my body of artwork beginning a few years ago: the freedom to work in larger formats than what I could do with pastel.

Stay tuned, there may be more large format pieces in the future...

The Very Beginning - I work in freehand for everything that I create, so I don't use projectors or other mechanisms to "trace" my compositions into place. If you click this image to enlarge it and look carefully, you'll see that I've divided the canvas into four quadrants to help anchor the main elements of the composition. At this point, it's just a straightforward matter of sketching in the composition with earth tones.

 

 

 

 

Early Colors - The process of working in oil painting is very similar to my "native" medium of pastel in that I work from dark shadow tones forward to midtones and then highlights. In addition, I like to start in the distance and then work forward in a composition like this.

 

 

 

 

Almost Finished on the Easel - I have two easels in my studio, and when I finished this piece and removed it, my studio felt empty.

 

Final - The completed painting.

 

In its New Home - I'm here with my client and I'm pleased to report that I didn't pound a million mistaken holes into his wall...I hung it level on the first try - hooray!

What's New in the New Year?

Yikes! It's a new year already, and although I don't believe in making resolutions, I do like to use this time of a year as an opportunity to assess where I'm at with my painting and to set up new goals for the year ahead. It's easier for me to slow down and think at this time of year than it is during the summer or fall, when I'm usually up to my eyeballs in exhibiting at outdoor art shows or plein air painting while the weather is advantageous.

In a rather anticlimactic way to kick off the new year, I've been taking the time to clean up my studio space. Sometimes, you have to clear the cognitive clutter in order to focus more effectively on creative work. In addition, the re-organization of my studio space reflects a change in direction for me. This past year, I transitioned from working exclusively in the pastel medium to adding oil painting to my body of artwork. This year, my goal is to work exclusively in oils. New year, new me? Maybe.

Manhattan Mist 36" x 36" oil on canvas.

Why the change? A few reasons. First, pastels are exceptionally dusty to work with. I love the medium, but I hate the mess. And after more than a decade of dealing with it in our home (my studio is above our garage), I decided to pull the plug on it. Second, I participated in my first outdoor art shows with my oil paintings last year and it went well. Those "trial balloon" events gave me some positive feedback that I"m on the right track with my ideas and my approach. Finally, I've been ready for a change for a couple of years now. It's high time to do something different, and the new challenges of this medium have revitalized me. Thanks to some excellent workshops and instruction from other professional artists, I'm excited about the possibilities of this year and more years ahead.

My first new painting of 2017, "Manhattan Mist," is shown here. This is a 36" x 36" oil on canvas based on a smaller study that I completed late last year. This is a view across midtown Manhattan, along West 48th Street. Enjoy!

Winter and Experimentation

Yesterday was the official start of winter and today, happily, the days start to get longer. I'm already looking forward to getting out into my veggie garden in just a few short months, but I also value this time of year for the opportunity to rest and restore my creative spirit. This is the season when I experiment with my art materials and try some more ambitious motifs in my studio that I don't have time to explore during my busy summer months. After all, when the wind is howling and the snow is blowing sideways, what better time to slink into my studio with a warm cup of tea and really dive deep into a big piece or new idea?

My Palette featuring several different blues (and one green) mixed out from full strength down to lighter tints to see which one has the vibrancy that I need.

Right now, I'm doing precisely that. I'm tackling a series of larger cityscapes during these upcoming months. I have a bunch of exhibitions coming up in the spring and I'm excited by the opportunities ahead. I'm currently working on a 36" x 36" oil on canvas featuring a view along West 48th Street in midtown Manhattan. Over this past year, I've had a fairly established selection of oil paint colors that I've used in all of my works, whether they were landscapes or cityscapes. A consistent palette of colors is important to streamline the working process and maintain predictability in color mixtures.

But for this particular subject, I found that my blues were falling short of the mark. Naturally, I took to the Internet and ordered in some new colors from my favorite online suppliers (Jerrys Artarama, Dick Blick, and Utrecht). Have I mentioned that the coolest thing about being an artist is that you can paint _AND_ satisfy your compulsive shopping urges at the same time?

Anyways, I ordered in some new paints from a variety of manufacturers until I found just the right ultramarine blue for the job. Gamblin won, in case you were wondering. The big piece is still in process and you can grab a sneak peek of it via my Instagram account, but it isn't quite ready for its full-fledged debut on my web site. Instead, today I'm posting the small 8 x 8 study, "Midtown Mist" here for you to see what will come off of my easel early in 2017. Enjoy!

Study, Midtown Mist 8 x 8 oil on panel.

What I'm Working On Now

This weekend will be my last outdoor art show for the 2016 season, the Bethesda Row Fine Art Show in Maryland. While I finish final preparations for this event, I'm already looking forward to a mini vacation to tour the Civil War national battlefield of Antietam in Sharpsburg, Maryland with a Park Service certified guide later next week. I'm an American history enthusiast and I love seeing history firsthand, which is one of the biggest benefits to living in Pennsylvania and the East Coast in general. But when I get back to my studio, it's shaping up to be a busy fall season even though my outdoor shows will be finished for this year.

In case you're wondering why you haven't seen many new additions to my portfolio of available works online, it's because I'm currently working on many different custom pieces of artwork for different clients. Some of these pieces are based on ideas close to home, such as a series inspired by the beautiful Penn State campus for a university alum. In addition, the local hospital, Mount Nittany Medical Center, asked me to help them with a landscape painting for their president. I'm also working on my largest painting ever, a cityscape, for a client in Philadelphia.

This particular piece weighs in at 3' x 6', and it's much larger than anything I could do in pastel due to the size limitations of paper and (im)practical issues associated with framing a pastel that large. This was one of the main reasons why I decided to add oil painting to my body of artwork beginning a couple of years ago: I wanted to work larger!

To tackle this painting, I bought some house painting brushes at the hardware store to help with the initial block-in of this large piece. And I'm having a blast working on it! I love working in this larger scale and I'm enjoying the rich colors of oil paint.

Study, Little Italy 8 x 12 oil on panel.

The subject of this 3' x 6' painting is the view along Mulberry Street in Lower Manhattan's Little Italy neighborhood. The idea for this painting originated out of a colorful study that I completed earlier this year, called Study, Little Italy (shown above). It's fun to take the original motif in that piece and stretch the idea larger across a vast canvas with some minor changes to tailor the artwork for my client.

This painting will take me many more weeks to complete. Following below are a few snapshots that show you the initial start. Enjoy!

The first compositional lines, painted in yellow ochre.

Large area block in of the main colors in the subject.

Initial refinements of the yellow cab and details in the heart of the composition.

School is Back in Session

I've been working on several new pastel cityscapes in anticipation of my final art shows later this fall. Shown here are a few new pieces fresh off the easel within this past month, including subjects from Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and New York City.

South Street Rain 8 x 8 original pastel.
A rainy summer day becomes a play of brilliant abstract color
along South Street in the heart of Philadelphia.

As the temperatures cool down and school resumes, it's worth highlighting that I'll teach a 6-week class for the Art Alliance of Central Pennsylvania in Lemont later this month. The class is called "Forward! Strategies for Strengthening Your Artwork" and it's suitable for both beginning and intermediate students in all 2D media.

I tailor this class to the interests of my students while we work on topics such as overcoming common creative roadblocks, choosing subjects, gathering strong source material, and resolving the challenges of color and composition. I pull materials from my background as an artist for Walt Disney Feature Animation, TED Talks, contemporary artists and my experience as a full time artist to help students set up their work spaces and focus in on the things that they want to address in their artwork as they move forward. The class will be held on Wednesday afternoons from 1-4pm beginning on September 30, 2015. Here's the full class description:

Ever feel stuck in a rut? Want to take your art to the next level?

Learn from a national award-winning fine artist and Walt Disney Feature Animation alum how to overcome the roadblocks, habits and fears that inhibit creating great art. We’ll cover topics including how to identify promising subjects; how to gather source material; overcoming the challenges of color, values and composition; what to do when you feel stuck; and how to effectively organize your workspace. This class is open to beginning and intermediate students who work in all 2-D media: acrylic, oils, watercolors, pastel, and drawing. The class will be tailored to the interests of participants. On the first day, please bring a sketchbook and your favorite drawing utensil.

For more information about this class and to register, please contact the Art Alliance of Central Pennsylvania by phone at (814) 234-2740 or through their web site: www.artalliancepa.org.

Dynamo 18 x 18 original pastel.
A view from the High Line Park in Lower Manhattan.

To the Point, Pittsburgh

This artwork is also available as a limited edition print.