Yellow Building, Downtown Batesville, Independence County

Yellow Building, Downtown Batesville

8X10, Oil on Panel

Available

 

 

This was a fun little painting, playing with all that bright yellow.  This is 52 out of 75 counties!  I still need 8 more to complete my goal before the end of the year.  It's a big task but maybe I can pull it off.  I just got back from a paint camp trip to the southeast corner of the state where I got 6 really solid painting starts.  Two of those probably only need very minor tune ups and they're done.

 

 

52/75

82 Degrees, Bank of Cave City, Sharp County

82 Degrees, Bank of Cave City

8X10, Oil on Panel

SOLD

 

 

 

A few months ago, I made a 3 county photographing trip, including Sharp County.  The town of Cave City sits right on the border with Independence County.  I was stopped in my tracks by the sight of this brand new bank being built here.  One of the things that caught my eye was how this very modern looking building with the large two story all glass atrium had a native stone façade on the front portion that almost perfectly matched the century old native stone storefronts down the street.  I've chosen to focus more on the sign here as I didn't see an obvious way to show how this building melded into the existing street front.   

 

51/75



La Voie de Triomphe

La Voie de Triomphe

10X14, Oil on Panel

Available

Escorted by Team Sky, Chris Froome rides to victory in Le Tour.

Cheyenne Mountain State Park, Colorado

Cheyenne Mountain State Park

8X10, Oil on Panel

Available

 

 

I mentioned a while back that I went to Colorado Springs for a workshop with Dan Schultz.  We camped at Cheyenne Mountain State Park for a few days before a storm blew in across the mountains and almost literally blew us of the mountainside.  This is the first painting I started when we got there and I was just never very happy with it on site but I brought it home and tweaked it a bit to get this as a final result.

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, North Lawn, Benton County

Crystal Bridges, North Lawn

11X14, Oil on Panel

Available

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is a located in Bentonville in Benton County.  This is an incredibly impressive, world-class facility.  It's collection is large and growing with some of America's great luminary artists represented:  Sargent, Remington, Rothko, geez I could go on and on.  It is a must see and is already generating a massive influx of tourists to the region.  I highly recommend the trip here to visit.  I will have to try to do a post about the contents of the museum itself here in the near future.

This is county 50 of 75 finally.  I am way off the mark for my goal of twenty counties this year but I have a trip planned soon to the southeastern corner of the state which should knock out a several more.

Daffodils

Daffodils

8X10, Oil on Panel

SOLD

I've been having some issues lately with getting pictures of new paintings from my camera to my computer so they can be processed for uploading so here is an older piece.  Hopefully I will have another new painting to publish here tonight.

I really should paint flowers more often. 

I seem to like to do still life during the spring and fall for some reason. I know a lot of people would quote some composition "rules" on me about this one but I really like the composition. I think the splash of the warmest yellow in the center of the opening blossom is more than sufficient to overcome the convergence of "pointers" that some would say work to pull the eye out of the frame. This was a conscious choice. I looked at several different arrangements and subtle variations of this one and I just kept coming back to this general setup. I thought there was great tension in the relative positions of the flowers within the frame.

It was amazing how fast the one blossom opened as I painted them. It was barely cracked open when I was designing the image but by the time I was done the petals were diverging quickly! Had I needed another couple of hours, I think it would have been fully open. I did chase the shape some before I realized what was happening.

Six Finger Falls Cascade, Searcy County

Six Finger Falls Cascade

8X10, Oil on Panel

Available

 

 

After I got a really good solid start on my painting of Falling Water Falls a few weeks ago, we drove on up the road to another nice multi-cascade fall called Six Finger Falls.  Here, thin layers of shale have been shaped into multiple "fingers" (six I guess, I have never bothered to count them) in between which roar cascades of water.  This fall is more impressive in higher water but if it gets too high then the water covers over the finger effect.  I was not very pleased with the result I got on-site so at the end of my session I wiped away basically all of the rock area to a mid tone gray and took it home and worked it into this a few weeks later.

 

We had been planning a camping trip to the Buffalo this weekend but with the government shutdown, all national park and forest service campgrounds are closed.  Looks like we may be venturing to a new place instead.

Sleepy Hollow, Pulaski County

Sleepy Hollow

8X10, Oil on Panel

SOLD

 

 

 

A few weeks ago, I went out plein air painting with friend and fellow Arkansas League of Artists board member Sean Lecrone.  We went driving out Highway 10 west of Little Rock past Lake Maumelle.  I had been out that way a week earlier and had noticed a lot of potential sites that I wanted to get a better look at.  There are barns, streams, boats and all sorts of subject matter.  We settled on a little boat launch area of Lake Maumelle called Sleepy Hollow and this painting was the end result.