Western Canada

Indian Totems at Stanley Park, Vancouver pen and ink 5" X 8"

Vancouver has a wonderful city park,
complete with some wild forests and
an impressive display of carved totem
poles from a few of the nearby Indian
nations. This drawing from the time
when I was just learning the art gives
a rather humerous view of the sculptures
in a natural environment.

Lone Totem in Stanley Park pen and ink 5" X 8"

The City by the Bay

Golden Gate Bridge from Sketchbook india ink 5" X 8"


Here is a drawing of the Golden Gate Bridge straight from my sketchbook with the Marin Headlands in the background. It is a brief sketch that shows the importance of scale if little else. San Francisco is a city of unusual landforms and stunning beauty, so elequently captured by the artworks of Wayne Thiebaud among others who have spent most of their life working in the city.

The above work should be seen only as a quick glimpse from a passing tourist.

The Lighthouse Hostels

The Lighthouse at Pescadoro pen and ink 5" X 8"


This is the lighthouse at Pescadero Point located on the California coast just a little bit south of San Francisco. The buildings drawn in the picture use to be living quarters for the coast guard, but nowadays they have been converted to a hostel under the auspices of Hostelling International.

This is the second of two popular California lighthouse hostels, the other being the Montara Light just ouside the city limits of San Francisco. The amazing thing about these two places is that they both sit on buslines that runs along the coast from San Francisco to Santa Cruz. In fact the Montara locale is also on a busline that runs out of the city by the bay. Yet both lighthouses are relatively uncrowded despite their stunning locations and near proximity to large urban areas.

The bus ride from Pescadero is as interesting bus ride that you will find in the US. There is only one bus a day, which you board at the lonely windswept peninsula at Pigeon Point and head south through the spectacular California coastline until you reach Big Basin State Park. Here you are dropped off for a three hour wait til the Santa Cruz bus is due. Have no fear about the wait, for at your feet is the beginning of a hiking trail that leads through an extensive old growth Redwood forest. The only thing that you really have to worry about, is pulling yourself away from the trail in time to make it back to the highway to jump on the bus. On second thought maybe that should not be a major concern for it only ten miles into the college town of Santa Cruz; well worth the trouble to spend the extra time in the Redwoods.

The Oregon Coast

Ecola Beach State Park watercolor 5" x 14"

Along the coast of Oregon I found a place to stay for a month in the beautiful town of Seaside. This particular watercolor was painted just a few miles south of Seaside at the state park. I was inspired to paint in the long format by the Kodak Panorama Camera that I was using to make photographs. All I did was to cut a normal sheet of watercolor paper lengthwise, and I had two sheets which I could use for my landscape. This format worked very well in pictures where the horizon dominated the painting. I did several pictures featuing the sky, surf and rocks of the Pacific Ocean.

On the Road

Columbia River Bridge watercolor 5" x 11"


From New Mexico I made two road trips out to the west coast. On the second trip I drove my own vehicle, a big Chrysler New Yorker, loaded with a V-8 and leather interior. It made for an enjoyable ride not only for its' comfort, but also for the fact that I could stop, whenever I saw an inviting landscape and take the time to make a drawing or as in this case a watercolor painting of an old, but still usable railroad bridge that straddled the Columbia River.

While heading west through the Columbia Gorge, I came across this scene where the wind had stirred up the river into whitecaps and the old railroad bridge formed a distinctive silhouette against the backdrop of low rolling mountains and a late afternoon summer sky. I spent a good part of a May afternoon here, before heading down the road to a nearby campground.

Near Big Bend

The Chihuahua Mountains Viewed from North of Presidio


The West was made for driving. The open highways, vast panoramas and big sky are an intoxicating mix to someone cruising along the colorful two-lane blacktops of the western states. From Taos I made one very interesting trip to the spectacular
region of west Texas, with its' much overlooked National Parks at Big Bend and Guadaloupe. I found the quality of light here to be of great beauty to a visual artist, not to mention the unusual landscape, especially in the Big Bend area.

Legend has it that when the Great Spirit was done creating everything, he had a huge pile of rocks left over, which were consequently left at the Big Bend near the Rio Grande. This story helps explain the strangness of this place very aptly, for its' unique qualities are hard to put into words.

The above watercolor has painted along the side of a desolate two-lane highway on the way from Marfa to Presidio. Although nowadays I don't venture out like that on a painting trip, I felt that it was important to display a few of the works, that I made while traveling.

At the Taos Studio

At the Studio in Taos pen and ink 8" x 10"


This is a pen and ink drawing that I did inside a friends' studio. It shows the struggle I was having between working in an abstract mode and working in a more realistic way. The studio wall is developed from a style that I had been working on for quite a while. Then I simply inserted the window and exterior scene with the resulting juxtaposition between the wall and the outside view. I would later while living in Maine come back to this theme, but at the time
that this piece was completed, I was working almost entirely outdoors.

My Post-Modern, AB-X, Urban Degenerative, Intuitive Right Brain Doodle

Overlapping pen and ink 8' X 10"


Actually I consider this to be a lot more than just a doodle. It is a full-fledged drawing based on many preceding sketches and drawings done over the past several years. This showing of this work does not have much to do with a weblog on landscape paintings, but instead is inspired by a recent news story concerning the discovery of a small cache of paintings done by the late Jackson Pollock.

Yes, thirty two paintings were found in a bundle in a NYC loft where Jackson painted between the years 1946 and 1949. At this point the paintings seem to be real, and it would surprise me very much if they turned out to be fake, for Mr. Pollock has the unique distinction of being the only major artist who has never been successfully copied or forged.

Jackson is unique in another way, in that he could never draw all that well. Like all abstract artists there are some of his drawings about, but they are an unimpressive lot. Considering all of this, I don't think his accomplishments have been overated one bit. He put American art on the international map, and in such a way that was authenic and forthright.

The piece pictured here was done recently and is meant as a quick glimpse into the realm of abstracted art and its' relationship to good drawing.

Art Marker Madness

Gulf Coast Abstract art markers 14" x 17"


When living along the Gulf Coast in Texas and Louisiana, I did a lot of drawings with art markers. This is not a medium that I would highly recomend, unless you use the water soluble variety. The only problem here, is that the water soluble markers are not permanent and consequently they will not last. If you use the alcohol based ones, then the fumes might
get to you, so you are probably better off painting or using oil pastels.

Still there is a mechanical quality to the markers that can lead to some very inventive results.
They are good for use with other media, and also good for applying an even color. Their immediancy can be a desired characteristic as well.

The reason I showed these though was to give an idea as to what I was up to with my artistic endeavors before my arrival in New Mexico. At first glance there probably is no connection whatsoever between this painting and the two previous landscapes. However, I feel there is an underlying sense of color and complexity of composition that is carried over into the landscapes.

Sagebrush, Junipers and Mountains

Sagebrush and Mountains oil pastel 11"x 14"


Once settled into life in the high desert, I started to join with up with other painters in outdoor sessions of landscape painting. As a group we would venture to various locales near where

we lived and spend the afternoon or day painting plein aire (that's means outdoors in English ). This began when I was offered to spend a week in a watercolor workshop painting the canyon and hills around the Rio Grande as it flows through the tiny town of Pilar.

Afterwards I continued painting outdoors, usually alone but sometimes with another painter.
Eventually, I ended up in Taos painting the local landscape with a painting class at the University of New Mexico. This class consisted of meeting at the school, then driving to a particular locale and spending the afternoon there. I took the same class several times as did many of the students.

One of the most popular painting locations was the rest stop located on Highway 68, just about eight miles south ot the town of Taos. From this spot there is a stunning view of the Rio Grande Gorge, the town of Taos and the snow-capped peaks of the Sangre de Christo

mountains. Over the few short years that I lived there, I have seen quite a few painters there, working intently on capturing the quiet beauty of the area. The above painting was done from that very spot, but it does not include the river gorge.

Taos

Taos, New Mexico    oil pastel    11" X 14"

In 1993 I moved from the hot and humid Gulf Coast of Texas, to the high desert of northern New Mexico. The changes in locale dramaticly affected my work. I was visually overwhelmed by the vast horizons, the distant snow-capped mountains and the immediate red earth and clay that surrounded me. The new visual stimulusaffected my paintings and drawings in many ways, pushing me strongly into the world of plein aire painting and abstraction from nature. Previously, my works had been abstract pieces done in a studio. Sometimes, I would mix figures and primitve landscapes into the work, but for the most part the paintings were created from an interior world. Only rarely did I venture outdoors to sketch. All that changed when I experienced the endless vistas of the land of enchantment. From then on I would continue to develop my work in a more realistic mode.