The Northwest Current Article about the Foundry Show

I'm quoted in the Northwest Current (that's Northwest Washington, D.C.) in an article on the upcoming show at The Foundry Gallery "Celebrate Gay Marriage." As a curator of the show and the co-president of the gallery, I got to share some thoughts... some rambling thoughts... about the upcoming show. It takes a little time to load the pdf of the newspaper, but the article is mentioned at the bottom of the front page and appears on page 13.
http://www.currentnewspapers.com/admin/uploadfiles/NW%20DEC%2029%201.pdf

Softening

Endless choices go into painting. With oil paint, you can think up an idea, like "what if the sky isn't so striped with clouds?" and brush out the distinct cloud shapes that dominated an earlier version. Those stripes are gone, and the shadows of the trees are less harsh, making what I hope is a softer contrast with the strong, hard-edged dark shadow in the foreground.

With the softening, I think some aspects of the painting work better... but looking at the earlier version, I miss some of the tension of those stripes. This is where painting alone in a studio has its disadvantages -- in a room full of other artists, people aren't afraid to share their opinions and advice can either help find a new solution or help affirm the choice that was made.

Farms in Maryland, updated

These paintings were both started months ago. The soccer field in St. Mary's County was a quick sketch, but evoked a lot of comments from people. It needed a lot more paint, but I wanted to retain the loose and fresh feel of painting on a windy day. I think that one's done.

As for the wagon and farm, the painting was started with a big, not-quite-silhouetted barn obscuring the left hand side (you can see it months ago when I posted its image). I hated that barn -- it was supposed to push you past it, but it just didn't work. I've been at that farm enough, stared at enough wagons, that today I painted out the barn and painted in the rest of the wagon and the white farmhouse beyond. I still want to work on making the painting parts work together more, so I hope I'll get more time to play with it.

Great Falls, now done & redone

The painting of Great Falls, started months ago, was just scraped down and awaiting either a complete repaint or, maybe, finishing. Working in the studio, with only my memories of Great Falls -- and a lot of time spent painting there -- I finished the painting.

Summer Painting, finally done

I finally had time today to work again on a painting I'd started this summer. The painting -- of a backlit set of pots filled with banana plants -- was a variation on a work I'd done a few days before, but this time with warm and cool colors reversed. On the second go-around, I didn't have timt to finish the painting and I thought it needed some refinement. Here's the new work and, for comparison, both its earlier iteration and the red/warm version. I think the warm painting as well as the cool, newly finished work will be in my upcoming show (with 3 other artists) at the Foundry Gallery in February.

Brunch at Julia's

I never paint anything I'm not looking at. Until today -- I painted, from memory, a scene of a brunch I went to last week. An artist friend invited a group of us to her exhuberantly decorated home. On the walls were her vivid abstract paintings. She set the table with a mix of teacups and plates collected from her travels and homes around the world.

What I remembered so clearly was the color of the room, light from the south-facing window, and the sense of energy pulsing from all of the people, the food and the pots, plates, glasses everywhere. A chandelier over the table was hung with glass grapes and ornaments.

Foundry Gallery Activity

I've barely had time to think about painting this fall -- not a good thing. Part of the problem is that I've accepted the position of co-president of the Foundry Gallery in Washington, D.C. The gallery business is tough and we are responding to the challenging economic climate with more events, more special shows to elevate the debate about art and the profile of the gallery.

Today I finished, with 2 colleagues, jurying a show we're holding in January to celebrate gay marriage. The submissions of work were inspiring! The discussions we had jurying the work were deep -- we only had the work to go on, no explanatory notes from the artists, so the interpretation of why images were chosen, palettes used, how the work would fit in the context of the show's theme -- and our choices will, I hope, be a great show next month.

I'm in a show in February at the gallery, one of four artists whose work will be in the main gallery. I shouldn't be writing this now, but up in the studio working!