The Golden Rule

The Golden Rule

by Norman Rockwell 1961

A little art history today for you.

Norman Rockwell's drawing was done in 1953, inspired by the United Nation's humanitarian mission, his idea was to portray the UN as the world's hope for the future, including 65 people representing the world's nations, "waiting for the delegates to straighten out the world, so that they might live in peace and without fear."

Rockwell was a compassionate and liberal man and the simple phrase 'Do Unto Others as You Would Have Them Do Unto You" reflected his philosophy.  He traveled all of his life and felt welcomed wherever he went and considered himself a citizen of the world.  Rockwell said, "I'd been reading up on comparative religion.  The thing is that all major religions have the Golden Rule in Common.  'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you'.  Not always the same words but the same meaning."

In 2014, the UN rededicated a large mosaic of Rockwell's 1961 illustration, which hangs in their New York City headquarters.  The mosaic was originally presented to the UN in 1985 as a gift on behalf of the United States by then First Lady Nancy Reagan.

"Wayne's World"

20 x 11"

oil on panel
sold

Women Rock.  Especially Wayne Thiebaud's women.  Big, bold, colorful and direct.

This new painting for the upcoming show features two of Wayne Thiebaud's women - I'll start with the one on the left, Supine Woman - in the permanant collection of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.  The definition of supine can mean 'lying on one's back' or 'mentally or morally lethargic'.  Thiebaud's painted her, modeled by his daughter Twinka, in 1963 so the 'lying down' posture with open legs and a white dress, brown dress shoes and a clinched fist does make a profound statement if you consider the year 1963 given the oppression of women in society and the workplace.
The same can be said of Girl With Ice Cream Cone, also painted in 1963 - which includes the often painted subject of an ice cream cone.  This fabulous piece hangs in the Hirshhorn at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC.

I read if Edward Hopper can be called the painter of the East coast certainly Wayne Thiebaud can be considered the painter of the West coast.  If you count the artbooks I've collected through the years, both Hopper and Thiebaud dominate.  They're both hugely influential to what I love about painting.  Thiebaud's range of subject matter goes from the most-recognized dessert compositions to stunning, aerial views of California landscapes and cityscapes to bold portraits to etchings and drawings.  His attention to edges and his love of shadows have formed a likewise style in how I paint.  I really do gush when I start talking about Thiebaud, an American treasure.

Please click here for a larger view.

"Here Comes The Sun"

6 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

Before I started on my 11th painting for the upcoming show, I knew I needed a warm up - choosing one of my personal favorites in the Art Institute of Chicago, Jules Breton's The Song of the Lark.

Breton was a French realist painter, born in 1827.  During his childhood, his father tended land for a rich landowner and this subject matter of his native region was prevalent throughout his painting career. 

The Song of the Lark made news a couple of years ago, in an interview by Bill Murray in the Huffington Post, where he recounted his first experience on a stage, which did not go well.  Murray headed towards Lake Michigan thinking 'If I'm going to die, I might as well go over toward the lake and float a bit."  Before he made it to the lake, he stopped in at the Art Institute of Chicago and saw Breton's painting and he thought "Well there's a girl who doesn't have a whole lot of prospects, but the sun's coming up anyway and she's got another chance at it.  So I think that gave me some sort of feeling that I too am a person and I get another chance everyday the sun comes up."

'Any form of art is a form of power. It has impact, it can affect change - it can not only move us, it makes us move.'   ~  Ossie Davis

An Honor

A little while back I was asked, by Dr. Gary Schallert, a Professor of Music and Director of Bands at Western Kentucky University Wind Ensemble, if I would be willing to contribute one of my painting images for the cover of their CD Of Our New Day Begun.  I painted Emanuel AME at Dawn in June of 2015, a few days after the tragic shootings occurred in Charleston, a way to mend a broken heart I suppose. 

Mr. Schallert explained the title song was written by Omar Thomas "to honor nine beautiful souls who lost their lives to a callous act of hatred and domestic terrorism on the evening of June 17, 2015 while worshipping in their beloved sanctuary, the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston."  Mr. Thomas goes on to say "My greatest challenge in creating this work was walking the line between reverence for the victims and their families, and honoring my strong, bitter feelings towards bothe the perpetrator and the segments of our society that continue to create people like him. I realized the the most powerful musical expression I could offer incorporated elements from both sides of the line - embracing my pain and anger while being moved by the displays of grace and forgiveness demonstrated by the victims' families."

I am honored to be a part of this project and thank Dr. Schallert for including me.

Music and art do soothe the soul.

"High Over Pennsylvania"

6 x 6"

oil on panel
sold

I was quite hypnotized last night watching one of my favorite TV programs - Aerial America, on the Smithsonian Channel.  I saw hundreds of paintings in my head - patterns and patchworks of colors and shapes - I just wish I could cruise over land like a bird.  With a camera.  Aerials get me so excited for someone afraid of heights.

Between the hours-long paintings I'm working on for an upcoming show, I am in need of letting loose, with no worries of details, no sketching, just swirling the oils around.  So with great inspiration from my favorite program, I hope to continue this series for a while and hope you enjoy the view.

This bird's-eye perspective is over the farmlands of Pennsylvania.  

This painting will be my last of 2016 - my 89th painting this year. 

~ and a Happy New Year to you.

Happy Holidays

Wishing you and yours

Peace & Love

2017 Mini Wall Calendars!

SOLD OUT

"Flower Girls"

6 x 6"

oil on panel
sold

I've imposed some much-needed, happy, cheerful acts on myself lately.  Baking cookies, Crock-Pot stew, the Muppets Christmas Carol and painting this colorful, soul-enriching piece featuring Diego Rivera's Flower Festival: Feast of Santa Anita. 

A couple of things I need to mention here - you don't see much progress on my blog because I'm working on paintings for a solo show held in early March.  It kills me not to reveal them as I go.

And... for those who've asked?  I have a calendar not quite ready, I know it's late in the year, but it's coming and I'll shout from the mountain top when it is.

Now for the artist Diego Rivera.  Born in 1886 in Guanajuato, Mexico - a large, colorful, overbearing, talented painter best known for his depictions of the working class and native Mexicans.  At the age of 35, through a government program, he painted a series of murals in public buildings about the country's people and its history, some controversial and all very powerful.

Rivera was a lady's man, married twice before marrying the artist Frida Kahlo who was 20 years younger - both known for their interest in radical politics and Marxism.  They fought often and divorced and remarried in 1940 - Kahlo died in 1954 and Rivera married again, to his art dealer.  He died several years later from cancer and heart failure in 1957.

Rivera's Flower Festival was painted in 1931 depicting a flower festival held on Good Friday in Santa Anita, included in a solo exhibition at MoMA the same year.  

"Positives and Negatives"

6 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

From inside the National Gallery of Art in DC, a woman viewing one of Franz Kline's powerful abstracts.

"Light Waves"

8 x 10"

oil on panel
sold

Today is Giving Tuesday and I am participating in my own way - donating 75% of the final sale of this painting to Our Lady of Perpetual Help Home here in Atlanta.  This hospice operates solely on private donations and cared for my dad.

"Ode To Autumn"

6 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

One of the many masterpieces in our National Gallery of Art in DC is Winslow Homer's Autumn.  It will take your breath away.  It's casual and approachable.  Homer's rich reds, bronzes, greys, greens and golds are as stunning as the fall leaves that surround us during these few weeks. Ode to autumn.

Winslow Homer is an American treasure, born 1836 in Boston - a printmaker, painter, illustrator.  A little-known fact - at the age of 25 he was sent to the front lines of the Civil War to sketch battle scenes, camp life, commanders - all of which were published in Harper's magazine. Those sketches were later formed into realized paintings when Homer returned home.

Homer then turned his attenton to more nostalgic scenes of childhood and family - then to postwar subjects of Reconstruction and depictions of African American life after emancipation.   The most familiar paintings of Winslow Homer are his landscapes and seascapes - done is his later years when he moved to Prouts Neck, Maine.  It has been said Homer led an isolated life as an old man but continued to paint vigorously, hinting a turn to more abstract and expressive art.  He died at the young age of 74.

Speaking of American treasures....

I watched President Obama's ceremony today, awarding 21 Medal of Freedom recipients who all are truly outstanding humanitarians who've made positive, progressive, compassionate, brilliant contributions of our country.  I will miss President Obama for his grace and thoughtfulness and reminding me what's important and good about us.  Take some time and watch the ceremony in its full version here.

~ Happy Thanksgiving

"The Hill"

6 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

There is so much I'd like to express.

But this is my painting blog. 

Art does soothe the soul when it's needed most.

I've just returned from a trip to visit family and spent an afternoon soothing my soul in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.  As I crossed Constitution Avenue on my walk back to the car from the museum, I stopped to admire our newly-renovated, unscaffolded Capitol Building.  

"Woman To Woman"

6 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

Ahhhh.  Nothing quite as exquisite as a Vermeer painting.  The artist Jan Vermeer was born in the Netherlands in 1632, one of the most highly regarded Dutch artists of his time and all time.

There are scant records of Vermeer's start as an artist, but experts draw a straight line of influence to Rembrandt and Caravaggio.  Many of his masterpieces are about domestic scenes, depictions of women doing chores around the house - the notable and famous painting Girl with a Pearl Earring portrayed a young woman who worked in his household.

Jan Vermeer suffered financially in his old age, due to the Dutch economy tanking after being invaded by France in 1672.  He was deeply indebted by the time of his death in 1675, only then becoming more world-renowned and leaving approximately 36 paintings that are hung in prominent museums around the world including the gem you see in my painting titled Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, which hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

"Give Me a W"

6 x 6"

oil on panel
sold

My homage to Rockwell and our World Series - a young Chicago Cubs fan viewing Norman Rockwell's The Dugout.

GO CUBS!

"Cleared For Takeoff"

8 x 6"

oil on panel
sold

Speaking of the beach...

A friendly gull I met last week.

"Value Analysis"

6 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

I started this new study yesterday morning.  The painting the young woman is looking up at is one of my favorites by Norman Rockwell titled Girl in a Mirror.

I was listening to Michelle Obama's inspirational speech as I was painting.  Here is a portion that stuck with me...

"What message are our little girls hearing about who they should look like, how they should act? What lessons are they learning about their value as professionals, as human beings, about their dreams and aspirations?"

You can read Michelle Obama's speech in full here.

"A Way Of Life"

6 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

When I began listing works of art I'd like to feature portraying the American Spirit, I remembered this exquisite painting in Crystal Bridges titled The Indian and the Lily by George de Forest Brush, done in 1887.  It's one of the many pieces in the museum that knocked my socks off.  It is so intimate in size, so beautifully painted, so tender, a glimpse of a moment in the life of a Native American Indian.

A little bit about the artist, George de Forest Brush - born in Tennessee, raised in Brooklyn and Darien, Connecticut, he trained in New York then later in Paris under the brilliant artist Jean-Leon Gerome.  Gerome is one of my personal favorites and I can use the same descriptions of his work - intimate, exquisite, precise realism, glimpses into personal lives.  The influence of Gerome is so very evident in Brush's paintings.

After Brush returned to America and in 1882, he ventured west with his brother and found his subject, America's native people.  For more than a year he lived among the Arapahoe and Shoshone in Wyoming and the Crow in Montana - creating paintings and etchings of Indians 'far removed from the reality of contempory Indian life'.  Brush chose to depict the Indians in a 'timeless environment undisturbed by the advent of the modern'.  He resented the rapid industrial revolution and how it negatively affected the Native Americans, instead he desired to portray them in their way of life and their connection to the natural world.

An article I found tied Brush's painting to the story of Narcissus, the perils of seeking an unattainable perfection and the novel Imensee, a story of a man reaching out for a perfect water lily but nearly drowns when he falls into the pond, getting tangled in the roots of this perfect flower.  He climbs out of the water, looks back at the water lily floating calmly - a metaphor for the struggle of the Indian tribes maintaining their way of life in a complicated, progressing world.

You should take time to look at more of Brush's amazing paintings.  They offer peace and tenderness in these days of anxiety and unrest.

"Legacy"

6 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

I'll tell you a couple of things you don't know about me.

I love major league baseball.  We watch nearly every Braves game and we're bummed the season is ending this weekend.  We often watch late night LA Dodgers games for the pleasure of listening to Vin Scully announce the play-by-plays.  And sadly, that simple pleasure is coming to an end.  So a salute to Vin Scully, who's retiring after 67 seasons as the Voice of the Dodgers.  You'll be so missed.  On a happy note, the Chicago Cubs may very well be in the World Series and I'm rooting for them to go all the way.  Truth is, no other sports do a thing for me.  Just baseball.

Another thing you don't know about me - I failed Art History in college.  Two different classes as a matter of fact.  So now, I'm not only atoning for that, I'm avid about it.  The older I get, the more I grasp history and how art connects to it, to us.  You're never too old to learn.

Which brings me to my new project.  I'm mapping out the work for an upcoming solo show in the spring.  My recent visit to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art got me thinking about our American history - how art reflected the times, the movements, the struggles, the politics, everyday life.  

That notion evolved along with the summer of this Presidential election.  What's happened to me is I'm feeling defensive more and more about what kind of country we want, what we aspire to.  Do we embrace the past lessons and have we learned from them?  Do we want to move forward, progress as people, as a nation?  Do we accept our differences and find a way to live in harmony?  Are we proud of how we got here, our ancestors who many were immigrants?  Don't we want to be proud of our melting pot?  Do we want to be respected and show respect to one another?

That has brought me to an idea, a theme - something in the vein of American Pride or Spirit.  When I think in those terms, the best artworks I know come to mind.  I have a true passion for American art - you may have picked up on that.  Hopper, Rockwell, Thomas H Benton, Wyeth to name a few - depictions of who we are as Americans.  What we've accomplished thru thick and thin.  

So that's where I'm heading with my idea and I'd like you to be involved.  Be my focus group.  Offer ideas of iconic works of art that convey that American spirit.  I'll be working on small studies as I go - give me feedback.  Poopoo it if you want, give me a thumb's up if you want.  It all means something to me.

Now - a little bit about my new painting, which features Portrait of Alexander Hamilton by John Trumball, which hangs in Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.  John Trumbull was an artist during the American Revolutionary War, famous for his historical paintings - his Declaration of Independence is on the back side of the 2-dollar bill.

Trumball painted Hamilton's portrait in 1792, one of many made of Hamilton and considered the 'greatest known portrait' of one of our Founding Fathers.  

And a Happy October to you ~ 

"Souvenirs"

8 x 6"

oil on panel
sold

Happy Friday.

Before I post the link to this new painting going on auction tonight, I have a cool story to tell you.  

Yesterday I received an email from a woman asking about a painting I had done back in 2013.  I replied it had sold way back. She asked for a print. I replied I don't make prints.

She then told me the subject, a bungalow I spotted in Nebraska, on our road trip from San Francisco back to Atlanta, was her family's home.  

In disbelief, I asked her for the street address so I could compare it to my original photo - then with Google street view, I found the house, compared it to my photo and damn, if it wasn't the house!  In this big country, in all of the millions of houses in all of the small towns, I painted her house.  It still blows my mind.  

The number one question I'm asked is 'does anyone recognize themselves in your paintings?'  And to this day, in twelve years of doing over a couple of thousand paintings, it hasn't happened yet.  But someone out there, hundreds of miles away, recognized their house.  Absolutely freaking amazing.

Okay - back to my new painting.

A woman resting on a bench in the Art Institute of Chicago, with her Hopper gift bag full of souvenirs.

"Fried Fish"

6 x 6"

oil on panel
sold

I got my Hopper on today.

What was once a neighborhood restaurant around East Atlanta.

"Little Surfer"

7 x 5"

oil on panel
sold

A girl and her boogie board in the ocean in Miami Beach, Florida.

"Life On Marsh"

16 x 4"

oil on panel
sold

I decided to paint a serene landscape today, 1 - because I haven't painted a landscape in some time and 2 - it's a mellow Sunday and 3 - because I rocked out to the 30th Anniversary for Bob Dylan all afternoon while I painted.

 left half detail

right half detail

A panoramic view from the coast on Rock Harbor, Cape Cod.

"Flooded"

6 x 6"

oil on panel
sold

This was a study I did in the spring and decided to hang on to it - but this seems like the right time to offer it on auction to raise money. 

I donated the proceeds to the Red Cross Louisiana Flood Relief Fund - join me in an effort to help our friends in need.  To donate directly to the Red Cross Flood Relief Fund, click here.

"Wife Guard"

6 x 6"

oil on panel
sold

I just  L-u-r-v-e  how this painting turned out.

From the beach on Cape Cod, a man keeping watch over his sunbathing wife.

"Cypresses"

6 x 9-1/2"

oil on panel
sold

Most of you know bits and pieces of the life of Vincent van Gogh.  I promise you, if you've never seen a painting of his in person, you're really missing out on the splendor of brush strokes, the thick, rich colors swirling around the canvas, the movement, the passion that van Gogh had of the world around him.  

Van Gogh was 36-years-old when he painted 'Cypresses' - during his year-long stay at the asylum in Saint-Remy and a year before his death.  It is a more close-up view of the the tall and massive trees he found 'beautiful as regards lines and proportions, like an Eyptian obelisk'.