Busy Time - Getting Ready For My Studio Tour

Each Labor weekend I participate in the Santa Barbara Studio Artists Tour. Some 40 local professional artists open their studios so that art buyers and collectors may see how our art is generated.

I will be demonstrating how I develop a painting from multiple digital images - from choosing the source images, developing a composition, laying out my canvas, mixing my palette, to the production and finishing of a painting.

Come and visit my studio and gallery, and see how it is all done. View some of my recent work.

Next Friday evening (August 29) we will be having a reception at the local Arts Fund Gallery. There you will be able to see an example of each artist's work. Choose which artists you would like to visit and plan your tour for the following Saturday and Sunday (August 30 and 31).

Artists' Studios will open from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m each day. The reception is from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m.

You may purchase maps ($20) at the reception, from any participating artist's studio – including myself, or online at the Santa Barbara Studio Artists website. At the website you may see a complete list of the artists and their work.

See you next weekend?

August has been busy – Retrospective Exhibit

A few weeks ago I heard that a Featured Artist area at our local collaborative Gallery 113 had suddenly become available for the month of August, due to a cancellation.

I quickly signed up and pulled together "A Retrospect of Figurative Watercolors on Paper." consisting of eight paintings from my own collection. They show examples of my work from the period of 1998 to 2001.

Today I mostly paint figurative artwork in oil on canvas. But earlier I created a large body of watercolor paintings on paper. This Retrospective shows selected early works reflecting examples of my evolving interest in the activities of people: the basis of my recent work.

Some works were painted “en plein air,” and finished up in the studio. Others are early examples of my current technique of painting from multiple photographs.

Also, at that time, I was beginning experiments with my palette to find a few light-fast pigments from which to mix my colors. These investigations lead to the limited palette of my recent and current work with its colorful backgrounds and bold painterly details.

In some of these early paintings I began to introduced opaque gouache, the beginnings of my next period where I produced many paintings of gouache on board.

Above: "Feeding The Ducks," Watercolor and gouache on paper. 8-1/4 x 13 inches. June 2001. Painted en plein-air at Los Carneros Lake, Goleta, California.

A new crowd painting - from France

Last Spring we touring France, arriving in Avignon on a Saturday morning. The central square was full of young people sitting, drinking, talking, visiting with friends, or just viewing the activity at the many small tables spread outside the surrounding cafés.

The spring sunshine was warm and encouraging the Plain trees around the square to bud out to make a green and yellow arbor over the scene.

There are over a hundred people shown in the painting – most of them enjoying themselves.

As we joined the crowd, we sipped our own drinks and took photographs to record the event for this new painting: "Saturday Morning In Avignon," 24 x 48 inches, Oil on canvas. Unframed with painted edges.