Background on Two New Paintings

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Summer Island, oil on canvas, 20 x 30 inches, 2023

My painting Summer Island is at Somerville Manning Gallery in Greenville, DE. Funny story behind it. Originally I painted a nearby peninsula extending into the waters of a northern lake. The far shore was close by as well and was heavily forested. 

I liked the result but as I studied the painting I found the most intrigue in the wonderfully irregular rhythms of the peninsula in the foreground. Wanting to give that the star billing I painted on it further and gradually pushed the background farther and farther into the distance. Eventually the distant forests dissolved into peaceful atmospheric blues.

Finally the foreground trees seemed to ask to stand alone, so I cut the peninsula off from the shore. The remaining little island seemed happiest with it new untethered status.




 Kitchen Table, Truro Studio, oil on panel, 18 x 24 inches, 2023

Kitchen Table, Truro Studio is in the new exhibition The Mind's Eye: Turning Inward at Courthouse Gallery Fine Art in Ellsworth, ME Dec. 6 - Jan. 18, 2024. The gallery invited its artists to reflect on how the turn to our colder season can nudge our state of mind into new and more contemplative territory. Mulling the idea over I chose to re-examine a view I'd painted before when I was staying and working in the artist Edward Hopper's former studio on Cape Cod. 

The cooler weather drives us indoors. Most of us probably spend a little extra time musing at the kitchen table. An earlier painting of Hopper's kitchen I'd made was more a wide-angle view of room. This time  I wanted to celebrate the modest comfort one might find from a single wooden chair and the simple table. It's a tribute to a painter from an earlier generation whose work has been such an inspiration for my own paintings.

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