Ventana Gallery

I am excited to announce that my art will be represented by the prestigious Ventana Gallery located on Canyon Road in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I gained acceptance into this  gallery early in February and recently shipped three of my newest paintings that will be hanging with the likes of John Nieto and Rebecca Tobey! You can check it all out at http://ventanafineart.com/

Early Start 40x30

Restoration Complete 30x40

Spring Creek 48x36

These are the paintings that are now on display and may be purchased from the Ventana Gallery!

Summer "Pop Up" Gallery

 Well, it is official. We will again be occupying the lower corner space in the historic Hastings Building for our "839 pop-up Gallery" in downtown Port Townsend.. This is an awesome space. It has fairly good light, high ceilings and the art shows very well. I am again partnering with Jim Jacobson another local artist who works with oils and creates popular local and marine scenes.





We will be moving in the first of April and staying through the summer. I am looking forward to meeting all kinds of fun and exciting people and talking about art.  And, hopefully, we will be shipping a few paintings to new locations around the country.

May in Olympia

Nine of my newest works will be showing during the month of May at the Childhood's End Gallery in Olympia, Washington. My art will be featured along with that of four other artists.

 

 

"Meet Me for Lunch" 24"x24"

Check out their website at www.childhoods-end-gallery.com. The exhibit will be up through May 31st. If you are in the area stop in and have a look at this great gallery!

Sketchy moments

Well, I have taken a little break from blogging but my wife and I have been doing our outdoor sketches on a fairly regular basis. Here are few highlights.

 

It was a nice sunny afternoon and we sat at a sidewalk bistro and sketched the Rose Theatre.  We love this little theatre and usually hit a matinee or an evening feature once or twice a month.  We watched "Gravity" in 3D and last week we saw "Captain Phillips".  Both are excellent movies.

I am thinking of doing a full size painting from this sketch.

We do a lot of hiking and this is a quick little sketch that I did while sitting in the Dosewallips State park next to the trail head.  We were having a lunch break after completing  a 4+ mile scenic hike through the forest.

 

This was a relaxing day at the beach.  It was sunny and windy at Point No Point so we found a spot to sit out of the wind and sketched the lighthouse. The beach was crowded with beachcombers, kite fliers and fishermen casting the surf for salmon.  Fun day!

 

 



Time to Draw

Well, we managed to squeeze in a few more outdoor drawing sessions.  these two sketches are the most recent.  The Bishop Victorian Hotel was sketched while sitting across the street in a parking lot.  It was a beautiful evening and we were early for our Saturday date night  movie so we decided to get out the camp chairs and do a quick sketch while we waited.  Everything went well until someone parked right in front of where we were sitting cutting off our view completely.  Oh well, it was about time for the movie to start anyway and the sketches were near completion. 

 

The boatyard sketch was completed today, the fourth of July!  Earlier in the day we did an eight mile bike ride up the Larry Scott Trail, enjoyed a delicious picnic lunch on a sunny beach and ended up in the boatyard about 4:00 p.m.  We parked our chairs in the shade of  the traveling boat lift  and spent about an hour sketching the "Paul Johnson" one of many boats in the yard waiting for paint and repairs. A fun day..........!

I really do enjoy the outdoor drawing sessions and plan to keep the momentum going for the rest of the summer. The choices for cool locations to draw or paint are endless!  Just do it!

The code of the Northwest

In order to maintain a lively business I feel that I must attempt to keep up and experiment a little with new technology.   So I decided to create a QR code for my sandwich board that I display at the entrance door to my upstairs studio here in Port Townsend.  These codes are nothing too new, you see them everywhere, but I rarely use them so I thought that I would try it and see if anyone would actually use one to retrieve information about my studio. You have to have a smart phone and an app (you can download one for free) to read the code.  Mine takes you to a short,  fun video that we put together.  So get your smartphone out and scan this code and give me your comments!

I have only had the board in place for a couple of days but I am pleasantly surprised by the response so far.  I think that this will be a successful endeavor and now I am kind of hooked on checking out other QR codes to see if  they have better ideas for using this "new" technology.
And......if you are ever in the neighborhood,  please do "come on up" and visit me in my studio!

Drawing what you see

My wife Jolene is also an artist and we have made a commitment to plein air paint or sketch together at least once a week during the spring and Summer months. We enjoy living in Port Townsend because there are endless subjects to fascinate us and no matter where you you look a vista craves to be painted.   These are pencil drawings of the sail loft at Point Hudson and the Pope Marine building as interpreted by Jolene.....

Here are my depictions of  the sail loft and the Pope Marine viewed from the same vantage point...  

It is fun to draw or paint together and see how novel each of us captures the same subject .

Plein Air Convention and Expo

Wow!  We just returned from the 2nd annual Plein Air Convention and Expo  held in Monterey, California.  We had a great time taking in all the marketing seminars and most of the artist demos.  We packed light and didn't take our painting supplies but we really enjoyed watching all the outdoor painting.  It was fun to watch the artists pick a location and a subject and then proceed to make a great painting within an hour or two. It was pretty windy and I felt very intimidated by all the talent but I managed to sit still long enough to do a quick sketch of Fisherman's Wharf.

Here are a few of  my convention highlights!

This is one of my favorite painters, Ken Auster doing one of his demonstrations onstage.  This picture was taken from the huge screens they had on either side of the stage.  Very easy to watch.

This is Ken's finished painting.  He paints large (love it) and completed this San Francisco trolley car scene in less than an hour.  Impressive to watch!

This is Russian painter Alexey Steele drawing a likeness of another great painter Scott Christensen.  Alexey is very animated and great fun to watch.  He will keep you fixated with his accented commentary.

John Crump, Another of my favorite painters is shown here painting on the windy beach.  He also paints larger than most of the others so naturally I am interested!

This is John's finished painting that he created for his demonstration the day before.  This 24"x48" painting was executed in about an hour. Amazing!  I missed his demo but sought him out on the beach and got to talk to him in person.  Great guy!

This is Don Demers doing a demo on the beach.  He is a great Maritime painter and always draws a huge crowd.

And there were plein air painters everywhere!  They came from all over the world to be here for this event.  Spectacular!