short showing at Bethesda Library

We have a new installation coming in our display cases on Friday and our walls on Monday -- in the interim, my work is up -- July 31 - August 4.

Tips for the Day

1. This weekend at Glen Echo, July 18 - 20 from 12-5 pm each day, there's a show I've coordinated of landscape painters who have been studying under Walt Bartman.  Talented painters, low prices, it's a great deal.  I'll be in the gallery on Friday from 12 - 5.

2. Murphy's Oil Soap to clean brushes -- why didn't anyone tell me this before?  I put a big handful of brushes, tightly packed, into a jar with about 3/4 inch of Murphy's Oil Soap, left them overnight.  They are wonderfully paint-free today and the whole deal was cheap, easy, effective and much better than any brush cleaner I've tried before.   The deal's off it it means the brushes won't hold paint... but I figure a few swishes in mineral spirits before I paint next should have them in fine shape to pick up and lay down paint again.

Rossdhu Gate, day 2

This was a day to tackle a complex subject!  I  painted this from the other side of the court, but I need to spend more time on this to make it make some sense!

Rossdhu Gate

This is painting heaven.  Historic Rossdhu Gate --  www.rossdhugate.com -- is amazingly beautiful, beautifully restored and landscaped.  I have to thank my friend who is the lucky owner of the property and has let me come paint at his house.

Final Installment -- House painting for a friend

This is the final of the house painting for my friend.

painting in a back yard

It was a great day for a back yard painting and Maggie the golden retriever posed for us.

House Painting for a Friend, Part 2

I came back to my friend's house to work on the painting in morning light -- even though her house faces north, it seemed to make a pretty big difference.  I'm not done yet -- but if you scroll back to the earlier post on this painting, you can see the work in progress.  One thing that I struggle with is "straight" lines.  If you look at a painting of a house by Edward Hopper you can see that the lines aren't straight... but his great gift is that it doesn't matter since the edges of windows are not the focus of the painting.   When I do finish this painting, I hope to have the vision of the house hold the viewer's attention so that the "drawing" doesn't matter. 

Washington Sailing Marina with George, Jody and Uncle George

On a beautiful morning just south of National Airport, George's sister and uncle posed for us.  The photo of my finished painting has some shine (it's still very wet) but that's the idea of it.

Painting in Finland & Estonia

I made a spectacle of myself while on vacation in Finland and Estonia.  With the summer solstice light, I was able to paint at 10:30 at night and it was just about as bright as midday.  I had planned on doing a lot of mixing and bringing only primary colors, but I found that I'd brought cadmium red and it mixes pretty well into mud and that's about it.  While I bought mineral spirits at an art store in Helsinki, I didn't pick up crimson and I wish I had.  Quick dry white and a quick dry painting medium didn't really seem to offer much in the way of quick drying -- I did get these home in a Ray-Mar box that kept them separate, but they were still plenty wet when I got home.   Each of these oil sketches was done in about 45 minutes.

Estonian Modernism

I've just come back from a trip to Finland and Estonia.  One of the great delights of the trip was the KUMU art museum in Tallinn and the exhibit of Estonian artists.  This is a sample of work by Nikolai Triik.

I've tried to search a bit on the web for Estonian modernism and it's not easy to find -- but worth searching out or going to Estonia to see this museum ... among many wonderful reasons to go.