City Sunset

City Sunset, Acrylic on canvas, 16"x24"

Glimpses of the Sublime

Those of us blessed with normal vision are bombarded with images every waking moment. But a scant few of these actually make a memorable impression. I imagine the images that are meaningful enough to be recalled are unique for each of us even if we see the same common scenes.


Afloat is inspired by the endless bands of color that can be seen from an airplane window at sunrise and sunset. Because of the high perspective there is often no clear anchor point with which to orient oneself. Some color displays (such as when flying the polar route from the US to the far east during the summer) can be so spectacular and prolonged as to remain in memory forever.


PS: The slight glare on the surface is simply my error in taking the photo after applying the acrylic sealer.


Afloat, Acrylic on canvas, 18"x24", $100

Sanibel Dream

Sunsets have been a favorite subject in my paintings ever since I first picked up a brush. And there are few places in the world with sunsets as spectacular as on Sanibel island in Florida. This piece offers a play on Rothko's color field technique to describe the essence of a sunset.

Sanibel Dream, acrylic on canvas, 16"x20", $150.00

Blazing Sunset

The third and last in a series of knife paintings, Blazing Sunset was a challenge because of the complexity of colors I wanted to use. The challenge came from my wish to keep the colors as pure as possible and allow some optical mixing to occur on the paper without letting them get muddy. I also wanted to create some sense of movement that is often typical of fiery sunsets as they get to their peak. Keeping the knife strokes in the sky at a diagonal enhanced the feeling of movement such as might happen in a real sunset.

Blazing Sunset, Acrylic on 300lb watercolor paper, 11"x14", $75 (unframed)

Time-of-day effects in a landscape

That landscapes are subject to daily and seasonal changes provides opportunity to explore the same scene many times over. In the case of the impressionists, such exploration often spanned many years of their lives. The simplest approach I believe is to create a middle of the day study (such as Distant Coastline), then switch colors and adjust values for other times of day in subsequent pieces.

Sunset is an attempt to use the same composition as in Distant Coastline but with colors that might be more likely as the color hue and temperature changes with the waning of the day. The basic method used in Sunset is as I have previously described -- layers of gesso worked to a buttery cover for the canvas and then other colors worked into it with a knife.

Pictures like Sunset do not effectively separate the background, middle ground and foreground - except with the use of color. This can make the perspective appear a bit flat. This is less of a problem for an impressionistic work like this one but would be problematic for a more realistic style.

Sunset, Acrylic on canvas board, 8"X10" $90 (unframed)

Fascination with farmland

Few scenes could be simpler than the farmland of the North American midwest. Even though I grew up in an urban environment, spending over two decades in Ontario and Michigan allowed me to appreciate the endless possibilities offered by the farm scene for a landscape painter.

Dusk emphasizes that quintessential element of the American farm, the treeline often planted or retained as a windbreak, which can be set off either against the background or the foreground to create interest. The paint is laid on rather thinly in this painting allowing the canvas texture to show through. Dry brushed highlights (to which the camera does not do justice) can be seen in both the sky and the field. These are just enough to suggest a low and distant sun, perhaps even just below the horizon. The overall mood of the painting definitely evokes a sense that the day is done.

Dusk, Acrylic on canvas board, 5"X7" $40 (unframed)