Luce Road Shed and Bush

The bush, though dormant, has vigorous life. It sits on the edge of road, the sentinal to the ancient shed.

Bird House

Walking up Stratton Road, or actually walking back down Stratton Road, one cannot miss this quaint little house attached to a tree.

Crossing Start

A view of the boats used to re-enact the crossing. 11x14 charcoal. Above the drawing is a 9x12 oil version of the drawing below.

NJ from PA over Delaware

This is a view of New Jersey from the Pennsylvania side of Washington Crossing Park. This image will make more sense in color.

Top of Blair Road in Winter

The pastel version of the previous drawing.

Blair Road in Winter

Trying to do some verticals for a change of pace. I wish winter would depart for a change of pace.

The Bridge on a Windy Day

This painting has been a challenge. It was still windy today when I crossed the bridge, but not as bad as yesterday.

Bridge over Choppy Waters

The wind was creating whitecaps in the Delaware River today. This bridge attracts me, but drawing and painting it is difficult because everything around it is organic, while its structure is rigid, straight-edged, and precise. So the problem always is how to blend the two modes. The bottoms up approach works.

Park Road Intersection and "The Case"

A version in color: 8x10 pastel over washes.

Annie Dillard writes in The Writing Life: "Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?"

Substitute the word painting for writing:

"Paint as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you paint for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin painting if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?" I may fall short.

Park Road

Another large 11 x 14 charcoal drawing of a road intersection in the park. I like the bright reflected light that almost blinds one, and renders things immaterial.

Lone Trekker in a Paintbox

The snow is melting. Hooray! But this image is from when the snow was still deep and new.

In The Writing Life Annie Dillard writes: "A painter cannot use paint like glue or screws to fasten down the world. The tubes of paint are like fingers; they work only if, inside the painter, the neural pathways are wide and clear to the brain. Cell by cell, molecule by molecule, atom by atom, part of the brain changes physical shape to accommodate and fit paint.

You adapt yourself, Paul Klee said, to the contents of the paintbox. Adapting yourself to the contents of the paintbox, he said, is more important than nature and its study. The painter, in other words, does not fit the paints to the world. He most certainly does not fit the world to himself. He fits himself to the paint. The self is the servant who bears the paintbox and its inherited contents. Klee called this insight, quite rightly, 'an altogether revolutionary new discovery.'" I am still working on the meaning of these words.

Three Trees and Annie Dillard

Actually they are the same tree from different angles. The first two are stix drawings and the top is a pastel. I was trying to capture the late day light in the trees, a la Annie Dillard. She writes in The Writing Life, a short book of great riches, "The work is not the vision itself, certainly. It is not the vision filled in, as if it had been a coloring book. It is not the vision reproduced in time; that were impossible. It is rather a simulacrum and a replacement. It is a golem. You try--you try every time--to reproduce the vision, to let your light so shine before men. But you can only come along with your bushel and hide it."

Snow Field

This is a simple 8x10 pastel on colourfix paper prepared with a few slight washes depicting a long view starting at my feet outward, or really inward.

Park Snow Field

A mid-afternoon view of a snow field in the park with a few deer tracks in the snow. It's what one sees after emerging from one end of the pine tree colonnade. This is a 9x12 oil.

Back Field

This is another place that I had to reach via snowshoe. 5x7 pastel. Small and trying to keep it simple. Looking south while yesterday's pastel looks north. Both are on pastelmat paper, which is not designed for wash, so I used a lot of wiping and rubbing.

Another Mountain View

To reach this view required walking in snowshoes. This is another 5x7 miniature, of a horse barn in Massachusetts, and a mountain in Vermont. Very simple.