Three new paintings done at the First Brush of Fall paint-out in Madison, IN: Trail One (the best), Fire Station No.2, and Train Station. Beastly hot and no prizes, but I was satisfied.

Completed two paintings for the paint-out sponsored by the Sullivan Munce cultural center. No prize winners, but a good experience except for the heat.

On a miserably hot, humid weekend I completed four paintings in two days between North Webster and Syracuse Indiana; Coneflowers, Dock, Wetlands, and Wetlands Path. The last was the best, so I posted the image here. I also decided to start changing the image on my front page whenever I make something I’m particularly proud of.

I joined the William T. Turman paint out put on by the Swope Art Museum this week. It ran Thursday through Sunday, but because I can’t count, I didn’t have a place to stay Saturday night and came home early. The original plan was to drive back to Terre Haute on Sunday for judging, but even though I completed 4 paintings I decided to miss the judging. I suppose there’s a chance I might have taken a prize or (gasp) sold a painting, but it seems unlikely, it is too hot, and I’d have to spend the evening framing my pieces. Anyway, look for four new landscapes, including this one of the mill in the pioneer village at Fowler park.

On Saturday, May 18, I participated in a paint out at Holcomb Gardens on the campus of Butler University. Early in the morning it was very foggy. I got there a little late and most of the fog had gone, but I tried to keep a little of the atmosphere. The view is of from the tow path on the central canal just south of the 52nd Street bridge.

I painted Deep Creek again on May 2. I love painting the creek whenever we are in the area. This view is looking downstream from the campground.

I love these wild irises that bloom in the spring along Deep Creek. This time there happened to be a fern nearby that I moved to improve the composition

This is the falls on Deep Creek just above the first bridge. I’ve painted it many times, including when I first started painting.

I’ve finished two oils this week. The first is a whitewater kayaker, the second is a still life of daffodils from the yard in a vase I made.

It’s too cold to take the dogs for a long walk and this jar with the asparagus fern behind it has been calling to me. Add some cloth for a background, and a brass gong, and all I had to do was paint it.

I’ve been working on an oil of the string quartet my dad played with back in the 50s, but I’m not happy with it yet. So today I started with a b&w photo of my dad as a teenager and the memory of a painting by Leroy Neiman and created this.

A new painting in oil from an old photo. I took the photo on section IV of the Chatooga river in about 1977. I always thought it was one of the best whitewater photos I took, with the paddler at the top looking down the rapids. Now it’s an oil painting too.

I’m really starting to like oils. I painted this in my living room a couple hours at a time over about a week. The ginkgo tree, the gazebo, and the pine tree on the left are all real but not in the locations in the painting.

Unfortunately, I don't have a photo of it, but it's a still life of daffodils in a clear vase.

Two paint outs in two weekends, this was painted at the 5th or 6th Art to Finish paint out in Franklin on August 12.

I participated in the annual paint out in Zionsville yesterday (August 5). I completed two paintings, the old railroad bridge shown above and Farmers Market. Comparing them is making me consider changing my preferred medium, at least at paint outs, to oils.

I’ve been thinking about painting more in oils lately. I love pastels but storage is problematic-they are delicate and need to be framed to be protected. Oils are easier to store and more popular to purchase. So I’m going to be painting with them more frequently.
I was at the locals farmers market for the first time last week and one stall had these beautiful golden beets. I’m helpless in the face of beets and so, with some potatoes, a bulb of garlic, an onion and a Revereware stock pot a still life was born.
The beets ended up on the dinner plate, but not cooked in the stock pot. They were delicious.

On Saturday, May 6 I participated in the Bona Thompson paint out in Irvington and painted the Grace Julian Clarke house. I think it turned out great.

Once again I participated in the annual First Brush of Spring paint-out at New Harmony with the Indiana plein air painters this past weekend. As usual, I felt I didn’t paint well. But I completed five paintings in three days, which I’m pretty pleased about. Of course, one of them I really don’t like and another is needs more work. But Dogwood, The Gas Kiln, and Reflection are now posted in the landscape section of my portfolio.

With the new year I have committed myself to a painting every week. I got a late start, but I completed paintings on January 10 (Vegetables for the Soup, in Still Life), 15 (Tea for Two, also a still life), 27 (Lily, portrait ), and February 3 (Self Portrait).

I do more figure drawing than any other painting. But I don’t particularly like it. It certainly doesn’t sell very well. Lately though, I think my figures are better than they used to do. So I’m resuming posting the best of newer ones, limited to the best single drawing of a session

There was a paint out in Brookville, IN October 21-23. I painted every day. This painting was at the Laurel feeder dam. I remember the area from canoe trips on the Whitewater river and the Whitewater canal. The feeder dam is the start of the restored canal.

In late September/early October we went back to one of our favorite places, Deep Creek in the Smoky Mountains. This was painted a few dozen steps from our camp site.

On August 27 I participated in the fourth annual Art to Finish in Franklin. I’m very fond of the Artcraft Theatre and decided to paint it. I chose to set the painting at night because going to the movies is a night time thing. I also added an old car (based on a 53 Ford) and some people in line. I’m disappointed with the people, I can’t draw people who aren’t posing as well as I’d like.

Two weeks after retirement, it was time to go on vacation. I needed it, I was exhausted. We started at Cook's Forest State Park in western Pennsylvania. It's a beautiful place if you like trees. And I do. An old growth hemlock and white pine forest, not as breathtaking as the huge trees at Joyce Kilmer memorial forest in NC, but still wonderful. I started on one painting there, but what I saw in it wasn't what was actually there. Some day I'll work on it some more. Then we spent the weekend (Friday and Saturday) in Corning, NY where we went to the glass museum and the Rockwell museum.
We finished off with a week at Watkins Glen state park at the south end of Seneca Lake. I did this painting, which Ellen thinks isn't quite there yet. Ah, an artist's work is never done.

After 35 years at the library, I retired on April 30, 2022. Of course my coworkers sent me lots of cards in congratulation plus gift certificates to for ceramic and pastel supplies. And I spent the next two weeks making cards to thank them for their good wishes plus a congratulation card to the great Randini who is also retiring soon. 13 4x6 cards was a lot more work than I've done in a while. I'm only posting one here. The rest are in the cards section of the portfolio.

I returned to the annual First Brush of Spring competition April 21-23. It was the first time I'd been in a couple of years.

I tried to outsmart the demon that makes me paint badly in competitions by changing media and working in oil. The result, Lonely Bridge, is probably not the best painting I've ever done, but for a pastelist it isn't a bad oil.

It was an overcast day which really helped with the atmosphere of the painting.

Last Friday, April 1 (oddly appropriate somehow), I participated in a drawing project and exhibition led by Chicago-based artist Anne Harris called Mind's I. For three hours a bunch of other people and I drew self-portraits which were then pinned to the walls so that they could all "converse" with each other. I'm not sure I really understand the last part, but I had fun and did 6 self portraits. I've posted #5 here because it was my favorite. I learned that it is VERY hard to look happy when you're drawing a self-portrait.

On a cold Sunday in January I decided to set up a still life. I based it on a painting at the art museum by someone I can't remember. It featured a large gold(ish) platter, a black ceramic jar, and a small porcelain cup with some leaves next to it. I didn't have a gold platter, so I substituted a silver one, replaced the black jar with a glass vase, and the tea cup with a ceramic bottle I'm proud of. The lap robe I used for the background may be a little too much, but I like the overall effect.

Two new paintings from our late September/early October trip to Colorado. you'll find them in the landscape section of the portfolio. There's a third painting, but it needs more work.

Black Canyon is a beautiful, lonely place, one of the least visited parks in the national park system and it's a dark sky reserve. One night in camp we were reading by headlight when we decided to stop. We turned out the lights and looked up and the stars were stunning.

My car needed service, so rather than sitting in a cool waiting room all morning, I took art supplies, walked to Broad Ripple Park and found this spot where through a break in the catalpa trees there was a lovely view of White River and a sycamore glowing in the early morning sunshine. Would only have been better if it hadn't been ridiculously hot and humid. After finishing this one, I walked into downtown Broad Ripple and did a second. See Broad Ripple Fire Station.

I have a book (and a couple computer files, and another book I can't find, and...) where I write quotes that I like. Some are funny. Some are serious. Some are both at the same time. I flip through it from time to time, regularly finding things I'd long forgotten about. Here's one that perfectly sums up why I prefer pastel.

“A brush is a mediator between me, the color and the image – and has its own characteristics. The pastel I have in my hand. I can feel it and make it run, smudge it, and mix it with my fingers, and know at once how thick it is. It bends to my will better than brushes and paint.”
- Maria Malczewska-Bernhardt, from an October 2013 Pastel Journal article

Last Saturday, July 17, I was invited to paint in a garden for the Franklin Heritage Secret Gardens tour. I spent the day at 2 Martin Place, a lovely Victorian. You'll find two new paintings in the Landscape section of my portfolio.

I stopped adding figure drawings a while back because I didn’t think they were any good. But since Covid-19 and restarting the Tuesday evening group, I think they are suddenly better. Check them out, but be warned: Nude People Ahead.

This is the second of two new paintings I did on July 4th weekend at our friends Rachel and Bill’s place.

Here’s the first of two paintings I did at our friends Rachel and Bill’s house near Leesburg, Indiana on July 4th weekend. This is part of the new landscaping in their front yard.

Here’s a new painting from a paint out at the Indiana Medical History Museum from June 12. This is the old pathology building on the grounds of the old Central State Hospital.

Pastel is my thing. I love the feel of the stick in my hand pressing against the paper.

But sometimes it's good to do something different. So I painted this in oil. It's a variation of a painting I did many years ago from a photograph of a bridge on the Chimney Tops trail in Smoky Mountains National Park. I loved that painting. It hung in my office at work for a long time. But then I sold it to the library foundation. They hung it in one of their conference rooms. I used to visit it from time to time. But then they moved it into storage somewhere and they couldn't tell me where. I missed it, so I repainted it partly from a photo of the original painting (I couldn't find the original photo). It's much larger than the original.

I finished this new still life with apples, oranges, and onions last week. The plate should have a band of repeated pattern around it, but it was going to be too complicated for me to do satisfactorily. So here it is with a simple band.

To celebrate my 65th birthday on November 10, 2020, I took two days off work and went painting. I completed two paintings, Abandoned Co-op (above) and Bethel United Methodist Church, on Monday, November 9, and a third painting (Clear Creek) on November 10.The weather was particularly nice for November. And on the evening of the 10th it rained and turned cold.

This is a tōrō, a traditional Japanese lantern. I've been making them since I started with ceramics. I've made about 10 of them so far. This was an early one, and the first really good one. Right now it sits on the marble floor next to the fireplace. The leaves drift in when the dog goes in and out. One evening I noticed how nice the composition was, so instead of sweeping up the leaves, I painted them.

I actually painted two paintings on our vacation this fall, but the other still needs work. This was painted at Patoka Lake where we were camped. A trail from our loop ended at these rocks on the shore of the lake. I would come and sit on theses rocks for my morning meditation. One morning the light was perfect, so I decided to paint them.

A couple weeks ago while walking the dog, the morning light was particularly nice and the grass was glowing with blues and greens. I especially noticed it by a wooden fence, which made an excellent background. I took a photo and determined to turn it into a painting. I finally started it on Friday, May 22 and finished the next morning.

While walking the dog one day I was standing on a platform looking over Eagle Creek Reservoir. I looked down at the water and it was a riot of blues, greys, and white but in a fairly regular pattern. Days later I was at home thinking and decided to create an abstract based on what I saw.

Last night Ellen set up a still life for me. This morning it was cold and overcast - not much chance of painting outside. So after walking the dog I started looking at the still life. I added the pears and the purple scarf to the vase of tulips and daffodils, and the Jaquard coverlet. Five hours later it had turned into a gorgeous day and I had this lovely painting. Curiously, I think the photo looks better than the painting.

Wednesday night Ellen and I decided we would do art tomorrow. So Thursday morning I started setting up a still life. I wanted something southwestern, so I tried a bunch of things I bought when I lived out west - two small pots, the Navajo rug, a sand painting, a piece of cactus wood, the kachina doll. But I couldn't find the right combination until Ellen suggested the red tablecloth as part of the background. After that it came together very quickly. The bracelet was added after the rest of the painting was almost done.

Stuck at home due to Covid19 and the weather has been terrible - cold, rainy, overcast, etc. But last Sunday, April 12 turned out to be a gorgeous day so I started looking for something outside to paint. I wandered up & down the street looking for anything. But then I looked out the bathroom window and saw our stone circle under the pine trees. To me it seemed like 20 minutes later I had this painting. Ellen assures me it was really over an hour. Sometimes simple works well.

I actually liked this painting all the way through the process, which is very unusual. There's usually a point where I just want to throw it out.

The chair that is the main subject of the painting is known in our family as the study chair. Its history as I know it starts in the 1880s when it belonged to my mother's father's father who was a minister. It was the chair in the office of the parsonage where he wrote his sermons.

When my grandfather was a small boy in Sunday school the teacher asked him a question. He said he didn't know the answer, so the teacher told him to study on it and answer next Sunday.

The next Sunday she asked him, "Did you study on that question?" and he burst into tears. When she asked what was the matter my grandfather replied, "I couldn't study on it. My daddy was in the study chair all week."

A number of years ago my sister refinished the chair. At some point the cane seat was damaged and it was stored in our basement. I've just had it recaned and wanted to put it into a painting. Originally I was going to put it with a rocking chair I bought a few years back at Mississinewa 1812, but eventually decided this was a better composition.

I woke up yesterday morning thinking about a still-life featuring this plaster bust. My sister-in-law made this bust of herself when she was in college. For some reason it lives at our house where I use it to hold one of my hats. It is a silly thing, so I started adding silly things: the propeller hat, the rubber nose, and the boa, but it still wasn't quite enough. So I added the wig stand, which I also use to hold a hat, the zombie sleep mask, and the ridiculous red tri-corn hat. Somehow it seemed perfect for Mardi gras next week.

I don't remember how we discovered the Great Pottery Throw Down, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhu4h-1Ua-E (season 1, episode 1) but after a couple years hiatus it is back for a fourth season.

And somehow that lead us to Portrait Artist of the Year 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWIjBIoPixs.

If you've seen The Great British Baking Show, these will seem very familiar. Well worth checking out.

I lightened up the original shadow and added additional shadows. I think I'm done with this painting now.

And in other news, I've gotten two "helpful" comments saying I've misspelled a word and that misspellings detract from the appearance of a website.

I haven't misspelled anything. According to Webster's International Dictionary the plural of still life is still lifes although still lives is an acceptable variant. If I was discussing more than one life, I would use lives. But I'm painting more than still life, so I prefer still lifes.

I suppose we could solve this by calling multiples stills life, but that seems silly.

I didn't do any art this week. The still-life I'm working on (Broken) requires sunlight and there wasn't any on the weekend. But on Tuesday I got to do something I haven't done for quite a while. There was a confusion with the model at figure drawing - totally my fault - and I ended up being the model.

i had a great time. I had forgotten how much fun it could be. I picked some very unusual poses, including hanging sloth-like from the bar. I got a lot of compliments on my posing, which has revised my interest in writing a booklet about how to be a figure model.

I started this painting last winter but got sidetracked by...I don't remember exactly. But because it was set up on the living room floor and the sun only hits the floor in winter.
But yesterday was a beautiful, sunny day and I managed to get most of it done. Unfortunately, I very suddenly started feeling ill and had to go lie down for a couple hours. By the time I felt better, the sun had moved too far to put in the shadows. I hope to get back to it this weekend.

The subject is a sculpture my parents bought when I was in junior high school. It had a prominent place in my parents' house and later their apartment until my mother, in her 90s, got angry about something, threw something across the room, the sculpture fell and was broken. My mother was heartbroken and insisted that all the pieces be saved in hopes that it could be reassembled. Unfortunately, a few pieces were lost.

I added the tennis ball as a cause for the breakage to transfer the blame to me.

I spent part of New Year's Day painting - trying to start the new year out right. Unfortunately, my efforts were, well..., lackluster. I was working in oils on a painting I started about a month ago. The top third, all background, is great. Just what I wanted. Parts of the rest are ok, but I discovered a fatal composition problem. I think I'm going to have to let it dry, gesso over it, and start again.

Needless to say, I'm not posting a photo of this turkey.

For someone whose art is rarely seen anywhere, I've been pretty busy. The Celebration of Nature show at Eagle Creek Park came down just before Christmas, as did the Indiana Plein Air Painters Association show at the Indiana Landmark Center. And now I've got two paintings in a new portrait show, "Seen," at the Garfield Park Art Center opening this Friday, January 3.

My contribution is "Self-Portrait in a Broken Mirror," and "Barbara Ann's Grandmother," Kind of my newest and my oldest portraits.

Here's the other painting I've put into the "Seen" portrait show at the Garfield Park Art Center. This was one of my first prize-winning entries in the Indiana State Fair, 20-odd years ago. Still one of my favorites though.

Amazingly, I currently have paintings in two shows right now.

The annual IPAPA show is happening at the Indiana History center into December. I have two paintings there: Laboratory and Downtown Franklin.

The Celebration of Nature is opening soon at Eagle Creek Park. I have 3 paintings there: Bird and Skull, Oak, and Dogwood, River, Windy Day.

First Friday receptions are happening at both on December 6.

After the recent loss of our dog Kirby I decided it was time for portraits of all our pets. I painted Katie many years ago when I was just starting. Jessie, aka the baby, was a puppy found on the railroad tracks behind Southport branch library when Ellen was leaving work. She lived with us from 6 months to just over 16 years.

Now on to Lily, Lucy, Maggie, Kirby, and Bodhi.

I stood in the hot sun on a street corner in downtown Franklin on Saturday (I started in the shade across the street, but the view wasn't as good so I had to move). I thought it was a pretty good painting even if it didn't win anything.

Last year there were 13 artist competing. This year there were 38. I can hardly wait to see what happens next year.

And in other new, I will be the artist in residence at Eagle Creek for the month of August. Still deciding what paintings will go into the show - because I've got so much time to get them together. I'm hanging them tomorrow.

I've got two paintings entered in the 2019 Indiana State Fair, this still life painted in April during the First Brush of Spring 2019 and the Winery Path painted at Turtle Run Winery near Corydon, IN. I hope to find out the results next week. Stay tuned.

We had the annual sale at the pottery studio yesterday and Saturday. There was a very good turnout. Shoko is planning to keep the sale open through the week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and next Saturday.

And much to my amazement, I SOLD A PAINTING!!! I don't believe I have ever sold a painting at a show before.

And speaking of shows, the 2018 Celebration of Nature show opened in the Earth Discovery Center at Eagle Creek Park Friday evening with three of my pieces. I met an artist whose work I've admired for years, Turns out we went to high school together, although I think he's a year younger than I am. Unfortunately now I can't remember his first name. Bob Meyers? He's had some beautiful night paintings in shows at the state fair and the Indiana Artists Club. His painting at Eagle Creek was of two pelicans flying - beautiful.

The Indiana Plein Air Painters Association annual show opens on Saturday, November 10 at the Hoosier Salon gallery, 22 N Rangeline Rd, in Carmel.

I have two paintings entered: Central State Power Plant and Summer Porch (now retitled Laundry Day).

Opening reception 5-9. The show runs through December 14.

The Indiana Medical History Museum had the second painting event that I've participated in. This time it was indoors. They set up still lifes with objects from their collection: bones, specimens in jars, including brains, heads, and I don't know what all else in 3 of the rooms. In this painting center stage is taken by skulls of a human and a gorilla. They look to me like they might be arguing about the origin of the species.

There are also a sacrum, a sternum, three arm bones, and a brain in a jar. Clearly the ulna is too long in my rendition.

The last weekend in September was the annual Purdue Film Society reunion, hosted by our friend Theresa at her condo in Virginia Beach. Theresa is a gardener and her driveway, front entryway and back patio are a riot of flowers. This is just outside her front door. I particularly liked the "Buddha cat."

We camped at Loft Mountain in the national park. The weather was cloudy, and since we were on top of the mountain that meant foggy. It was beautiful, but difficult. It was impossible to keep things dry and where there should have been views, there was only fog. So one day in camp I painted the "view" from our picnic table.

This is the second painting I did at Old Man's Cave State Park. This is the lower, and most impressive of the falls. There is a nice pool at the bottom with a sandy beach. That's where I set up.

This is the first of two paintings I started while on vacation. I actually finished this one later because it had issues. It's not everything I'd like it to be, but it is much better.

This is a small falls just below Old Man's Cave.

What the heck happened to September? Well, I went on vacation significantly far from internet access, for one thing.

I kind of fell off the a-painting-a-week bandwagon some time back, but I'm almost caught back up. I did four paintings on a 18 day vacation; two in Old Man's Cave State Park in southeastern Ohio, one in Shenandoah National Park, Virginia, and one in our friend Theresa's place in Virginia Beach.

Today, I did a weird thing. The Indiana Medical History Museum had an event in the museum - bring your dry media and paint objects from the museum's collection. It is connected to a big Frankenstein festival beginning tomorrow here in town. There were lots of bones, things in jars - including a couple heads, and the rooms themselves to draw from. It was an amazing event. I hope they do something similar again. I'm going to have to join the museum one of these days.

Ellen went to pick up my paintings at the fair on Monday because my schedule was crazy. She handed the woman the claim checks and she said, "Oh good. It's you. My husband is here helping move paintings. He saw your self-portrait and was terrified because he thought he had broken it." The painting was "Self-Portrait in a Cracked Mirror. (See March 23)

I haven't posted a Saturday painting for a while because I've missed a couple weeks. Three weeks ago I did a painting of Queen Anne's lace in the front yard, but I'm not happy with it yet. Neither am I happy with the portrait I did of Ellen the week before that, but it is slowly getting better.

I've had my eye on my neighbor's driveway for the past 9 years. This past Sunday I decided it was time. I stood at the end of their driveway looking toward their house.

All three of my entries, Summer Porch, From John Muir's Rock, and Self-Portrait in a Cracked Mirror, were hung at the fair this year. No prize winners, but I wasn't really expecting any.

Ellen volunteered to sit for a portrait. I've never really done a serious portrait before. We both thought it looked like her, but made her look a little too serious. Curiously, other people saw no resemblance to her.

For the fourth week in a row I have completed a painting on Saturday. I wasn't really in the mood, but buckled down and did it anyway. I did choose the smallest piece of paper I had mounted.

I am really loving these Blue Earth pastels.

Tuesday evening is figure drawing at the Herron Alumni group I'm in charge of. This week, Tuesday was July 3. I was very surprised to find the building open. I wasn't surprised to find all the rooms locked and no custodian to be found. I was extremely surprised when Ken, the model for the evening, suggested posing in the hallway and even more surprised when the group said, "OK. Let's do it." For the next 2 1/2 hours we all sat in comfy chairs in the hall while Ken stood on an end table posing.

It was a weird evening.and I did a weird painting.

After completing two successful paintings in the previous two Saturdays I decided to try & continue doing a painting every Saturday. This is the third painting.

I set up this still life on a folding table in the shade on the south side of our house. I love peaches and they've just been showing up in the grocery store in the past couple of weeks. The coneflowers and woody hydrangeas have also just recently started blooming. I combined them all and call the work Midsummer.

This is the second in my now weekly Saturday painting project.

This was painted on June 23 at the first (annual, I hope) Art to Finish competition in Franklin, Indiana. This is the back side of the Garment Factory, now an event space in Franklin, from the banks of Young's Creek in Province Park.

It won the adult prize.

For the past two Saturdays I've been involved in paint-outs with some success. I decided that I would continue the habit and try to do a painting every Saturday.

This is the first painting, of the power plant at the former Central State Mental Hospital, now the Indianapolis Medical History Museum. I painted this from a shady spot on an blisteringly hot day.

Pablo Neruda, in his poem A Certain Weariness (https://katikhu.livejournal.com/12420.html), writes about the things he is tired of. Today, in the face of a winter storm bringing 5-8 inches of snow on the 5th day of spring, I would like to add a couple of things.

I am weary of trees bare of leaves. It's 4 months since the last leaves fell in November. The new leaf buds are there, but still wrapped tightly above the slowly greening grass.

The early spring wildflowers have sprung up, been buried under new snow, come up again, and are about to be buried again.

The hummingbirds have made it up to central Tennessee and are headed this way. I hope they take a rest break before they come further north.

I long for the return of the green. I am weary of the grey world and want the slumbering life to reappear.

I have a cheap full-length mirror in the basement. I was attempting some organization down there when the mirror fell over. It didn't fall flat on its face, but landed on something on the way down that caused it to flex. It cracked, but didn't break. I should have thrown it away, but instead I said, "Self-portrait in a broken mirror could be interesting."

I still think it was an interesting idea but I would never do it again. You have to find the right reflection in the mirror, figure out what bit you're trying to paint, AND find the same spot on the painting. Still, I like the result.

The photo is still a little raw. I haven't had time to square it up. It won't be anywhere else on the site until I fix it, but here it is for the moment.

My friend & pottery teacher Shoko recently told me that my paintings appear to have stories attached to them. So I'm going starting back through the landscapes and adding the stories I remember about them.

I've been trying to clean the basement where most of my paintings are stored in non-climate controlled splendor and I found the first painting I ever did as an adult.

As I mention on my front page, I started painting in the 80s when, during our weekly drinking & frivolity get-together, my buddy Pat brought his oil paints to his brother's house. We sat on the back porch drinking & painting. Some days later he told me that he really liked what I had done and he was going to teach me how to draw.Thus began my long journey down the art rabbit hole.

I will be the first to admit that it's not much to look at. But I WAS drinking at the time. And I had zero experience with oils. And I hadn't thought about art since junior high - about 20 years earlier. It could have been much, much worse.

I dropped off three pastels at the state fair on Saturday. Conveniently I don't have pictures of two of them. Do I hope that they sell and justify my existence as a professional artist, or hope they don't so I can get good pictures?

I took the prices back off the site. No one was buying and on the off chance I might, one day, get a gallery to represent me, maybe they wouldn't want me to be competing with them.

I've been subscribing to Pastel Journal and The Artist's Magazine since around 2004. Until about a year and a half ago, I had read exactly one issue of each.

I finally decided back in the fall of 2009 that I should either read them, or cancel the subscription. So I started reading starting with the old Pastel Journals. They only come out every other month, so there were fewer of them.

I got caught up with Pastel Journal about this time last year. I finished the November 2008 Artist's Magazine at lunch today. Only 26 issues to go!

Reading them all at once like this gives an interesting perspective. Early on they were opposed to taking digital photos of your work. They weren't too enthusiastic about artists having their own websites either. All competitions required slides. Now you can e-mail your entries.

All my reading also inspired me to change my artist statement on my front page. Almost every artist profile I read contains the phrases, "I always wanted to be an artist," or "I've been drawing since I was a kid." I didn't, and I wanted my profile to make that clear.

I hope some of my reading has helped make me a better artist. I still have trouble thinking about myself as an artist.

I have high hopes that I'll maintain my site better in the near future. I only get a limited time to paint. I'd much rather spend it painting than photographing my work, posting it on the site, and maintaining my database. But I can talk a blue streak when there's no one around to listen to me, so at least I hope to add some entries to this section.

Last month I did 4 paintings at the annual First Brush of Spring paintout in New Harmony, IN. Look for them coming soon.

I've just posted four paintings done at the First Brush of Spring, an annual paint-out event in and around New Harmony every April, and three paintings I did in Florida in late March.

Those paintings which are for sale now have prices. They are based on size, which may not be displayed, and my subjective view of the quality.

My prices are pretty cheap. But they're also negotiable.

I told my friend Melanie that a website was a winter project, so I decided I'd better get to work before it wasn't winter anymore.

Now that I've got the basics down, I think I'm done playing with the format. Artwork in each category is show in chonological order, but for a long time I didn't put dates on things, so we're working from a rather shaky memory. But you can see a little how my work has changed over the years.

Not that I expect to sell anything anytime soon, but the next major change will be to add prices and the ability to purchase through the site.

More later!