Sweetie Comes Home

I brought Sweetie home today from the studio and installed her in the front garden. There she will be my tiny warrior, chin raised, cluthing her flower and leading her proud white steed.

She rests on a bed of anthracite coal, surrounded by railroad ties, which I put in a few years back. This coal bed has been the bed on which I have installed a small variety of paintings of various sizes over the years. I love anthracite coal as a landscaping stone because it is so black and I am very fond of industrial materials. I brought them all home myself in several trips, my pick-up truck groaning under the weight.

My front garden display changes throughout the year. I add or subtract different artworks as the mood strikes me.

Here is a view of most of the front yard:

The welded metal sculptures are by Wisconsin artist, Allen Miles. The flower forms which resemble sunflowers are actually plow blades. They also serve very well as bird and small animal feeders, because Allen provided a perch and a spike for corn or apples, or perhaps a nice piece of stale bread. I have several of his pieces and usually they end up next to my own paintings, having a nice conversation. I'll show you more later.

Small But Mighty

This is my new outdoor painting for my front garden. The old painting of an African-American woman leading a white horse (à la Alice Walker's "Am I Blue") was painted on rather fragile hollow core doors and could not take another summer of rain.

This new work is painted on much more durable marine plywood with cedar supports and will be coated with three layers of Aquathane ultraviolet absorber and weatherproofing clear gloss.

You're never too young to be a rebel. Isn't that right... Sweetie?


Acrylic paint on marine plywood, approximately 56 x 36" (142 x 91 cm.)

Rauschenberg, 1925 - 2008

You begin with the possibilities of the material.
- Robert Rauschenberg

We'll just see about that

Diego Rivera works on a mural at the Detroit Institute of Arts, 1932 (photo courtesy of the Detroit News)

I Paint What I See
-- by E.B. White

"'What do you paint, when you paint on a wall?'
Said John D.'s grandson Nelson.
'Do you paint just anything there at all?
'Will there be any doves, or a tree in fall?
'Or a hunting scene, like an English hall?'

'I paint what I see,' said Rivera.

'What are the colors you use when you paint?'
Said John D.'s grandson Nelson.
'Do you use any red in the beard of a saint?
'If you do, is it terribly red, or faint?
'Do you use any blue? Is it Prussian?'

'I paint what I paint,' said Rivera.

'Whose is that head that I see on the wall?'
Said John D.'s grandson Nelson.
'Is it anyone's head whom we know, at all?
'A Rensselaer, or a Saltonstall?
'Is it Franklin D.? Is it Mordaunt Hall?
Or is it the head of a Russian?

'I paint what I think,' said Rivera.

'I paint what I paint, I paint what I see,
'I paint what I think,' said Rivera,
'And the thing that is dearest in life to me
'In a bourgeois hall is Integrity;
'However . . .
'I'll take out a couple of people drinkin'
'And put in a picture of Abraham Lincoln;
'I could even give you McCormick's reaper
'And still not make my art much cheaper.
'But the head of Lenin has got to stay
'Or my friends will give the bird today,
'The bird, the bird, forever.'

'It's not good taste in a man like me,'
Said John D.'s grandson Neslon,
'To question an artist's integrity
'Or mention a practical thing like a fee,
'But I know what I like to a large degree,
'Though art I hate to hamper;
'For twenty-one thousand conservative bucks
'You painted a radical. I say shucks,
'I never could rent the offices-----
'The capitalistic offices.
'For this, as you know, is a public hall
'And people want doves, or a tree in fall
'And though your art I dislike to hamper,
'I owe a little to God and Gramper,
'And after all,
'It's my wall . . .'

'We'll see if it is,' said Rivera.

The Heavy Hand

Acrylic paint, silk and leather on paper. 7.5 x 10" (19.5 x 25 cm.)

Horse Latitudes

The Horse Latitudes are the subtropic latitudes between 30 and 36 degrees both north and south. There are few winds in the Horse Latitudes and little current . In colonial days ships could be slowed or even stalled to no movement at all for days or even weeks in confused seas and heat. To conserve water and food, and to lighten the loads of the ships in hopes of maximizing the effect of the light winds, sailors sometimes threw horses overboard. It is said that the horses would swim for miles after the ships until they drowned and that the sailors were haunted by dreams of the horses' panicked screams for the rest of the voyage.

In this painting a ship is caught in the Horse Latitudes. It carries a load of coins and tobacco. Four horses ride the waves above, but they are more cloud than corporeal. Are they real or are they only a pipedream of the Smoker who will enjoy the tobacco?

As I am in the midst of preparing boards for large outdoor paintings, I have engaged in this very small painting. Tomorrow I will produce another in between coats of gesso. This painting took about an hour and a half from start to finish.

Acrylic paint, silk and Virginia Pride* tobacco on paper 6.5 x 8” (16 x 20 cm.)

*Virginia Pride blend of tobacco is one third Cavendish. "Cavendish tobacco originated in the late 16th century, when Sir Thomas Cavendish, commanded a ship in Sir Richard Grenville's expedition to Virginia in 1585, and discovered that by dipping tobacco leaves in sugar it produced a milder and more mellow smoke." (source: Wikipedia)