During Wind and Rain - Study

During Wind and Rain - Study

6X8, Oil on Panel

SOLD

Last year, one of my biggest collectors, who also happens to write and direct musicals both off and sometimes on Broadway,  asked if I would paint something that could serve as a poster for an upcoming musical he was working on titled, "During Wind and Rain."  The musical is based upon real life events that occurred in one single family in Desha County, Arkansas around the turn of the century.  It is a tragic story of multiple deaths and the shadow they cast  upon a once prominent and wealthy cotton farming family.  I was intrigued and wanted to do it.  This is the study  upon which the final piece was based.  The musical opens in North Little Rock, Arkansas in April and I can't wait to see it.

Delta Autumn

Delta Autumn

8X10, Oil on Panel

Available

This past autumn continued a streak a less than optimal peak color in the state of Arkansas.  The weather was warmer than average and rains came too early.  This location is just east of Little Rock on an oxbow lake of the Arkansas River.  A local road bike runs past this so I knew from having sped by it in the past that is a nice peaceful and picturesque spot that might be worthy of painting.  I went by there one Saturday in November and snapped a photo for a photo exchange with a friend who also did a digital painting of this scene.

#3 of 50

Long Time Family Favorite

Long Time Family Favorite

8X10, Oil on Panel

SOLD

This was a commission of little Bar B Cue joint called Craig's in De Valls Bluff that I have painted before.  This one is now at home near Shreveport, LA.

Rest Your Spirit Against the Sky

Rest Your Spirit Against the Sky

10X15, Oil on Panel

SOLD

Derived from a photo reference I took during my Delta plein air trip about a year ago.  How different life was then.  There may not be many of those trips in the near future.

Honeysuckle and Home, Rector, Clay Co.

Honeysuckle and Home, Rector, AR

6X8, Oil on Panel

SOLD

 

It is a very special challenge trying to paint buildings on such small sizes and have them look like how I want.  This one was well begun on site but had to be finished up in studio.  It was officially the LAST of the 75 counties!  YAY!!!

The Ol' Cash Place, Mississippi County

The Ol' Cash Place

9X12, Oil on Panel

SOLD

 

 

Johnny Cash's boyhood home in Mississippi County.

Craig's BBQ, Prairie County

Craig's BBQ

14X18, Oil on Panel

SOLD

 

 

Sometime around the summer of 1989 or 1990, I was selected for a gifted and talented program called Project LAND.  This was part of a group of summer programs for high school students that went on all over the state.  I had previously attended one near my hometown called Project CAVES in which students were able to study and explore and caverns.  Project LAND was a bit further from home.  It was based in the Delta town of De Valls Bluff.  I don't think I had ever really been in the Delta before this.  This program consisted of 4 weeks of traveling the state of Arkansas and camping most every night.  It sounded a lot more fun that it really was.  We had to wake up early every  morning and break camp and load up in vans and travel to the next destination and learning opportunities.  We were supposed to keep a journal of what we saw and experienced and the instructors did not allow us to sleep in the vans since we were supposed to be writing in our journals.  In many ways, that experience laid the groundwork for this very project of painting something from every county.  I don't know if we traveled through every county during those 4 weeks but we must have come close.  I do know that as I did research for places to visit for this effort, I relied a lot on my experiences from Project LAND.

 

At the end of the 4 weeks, I was ready to get home.  My dad came down from the hills to pick me up but before we left the Delta, we stopped in at a little white cinder block building just outside of town.  Inside, I had my first true experience of barbecue.  It was a simple pulled pork sandwich with dry slaw and I will never forget it.  It's still to this day how I eat a pulled pork sandwich.  For many years, I thought the place was in Hazen which is just a few miles outside of De Valls Bluff but when I went over that way a few months ago, I discovered that white cinder block building was actually in De Valls Bluff proper and not very much outside of town as I remembered it being.  I also remembered it being almost in an open field with no trees behind it.  I don't know if that memory is accurate and all the trees are the product of 25 years of growth or if my memory is faulty.  But I do know without a doubt the Craig's BBQ left an impression on me, as did Project LAND.

Sharum Cemetary, Randolph County

Sharum Cemetary

8X10, Oil on Panel

Available

 

 

This is a plein air piece from a few weeks back.  I did this the same day as Clover Bend but I often take a while to photograph work.  I sometimes like taking on a subject matter that challenges both me and the viewer.

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Clover Bend, Lawrence County

Clover Bend

6X8, Oil on Panel

SOLD

 

 

I believe perhaps Clover Bend is names after a bend in the nearby Black River but I'm not entirely sure.  There is a historic community school there from the WPA era.  Possibly a precursor to the WPA community in Dyess made somewhat well known as the boyhood home of Johnny Cash.  I think I am going to go visit that on Monday.  This is a plein air painting I did 2 weeks ago.  The weather was chilly and drizzly.  I know a lot of plein air painters who would not have even bothered to paint that day but I think if you only paint on sunny days all of paintings will wind up looking more or less the same.  There is challenge to this flat light that I like.



 

65/75

Inundation, Crittenden County

Inundation

9X12, Oil on Panel

SOLD

 

 

A rice field filled with water...

 

 

64/75

Lit From Within, St. Francis County

Lit From Within

10X15, Oil on Panel

Available

 

 

This was from a picture I took on my way to a 25k trail race at Village Creek State Park near Wynne a few weeks ago.  The sun was rising behind me and the contra glow rising from the ground made me think the earth was glowing and giving off it's own light.  Thus the name, "Lit From Within."

 

 

63 of 75

Yellow By the Water's Edge, Drew County

Yellow by the Water's Edge

11X14, Oil on Panel

Available

Here is a studio piece done from photo references collected during my southeast Arkansas trip.  This was just a happenstance find.  I was almost out of Drew County when I saw this flash of yellow across a swampy pond.  I pulled as far off the road as I could and ran over and took as many pictures as I could without getting hit by traffic.  Now, there wasn't a whole lot of traffic, but what there was traveled pretty fast!

59/75

Harvested Rice Field at Dawn, Desha County

Harvested Rice Field at Dawn

30X40, Oil on Canvas

Available

This big one used my small plein air as it's study.  This painting, along with "Carver, Buffalo National River," will be going to Hot Springs tomorrow for the Hot Springs Fine Arts Center's Diamond National Show.  The opening for that show is this Friday night.

Delta Barn, Lincoln County

Delta Barn

8X10, Oil on Panel

SOLD

Just past where the timberlands turn into Delta, there sits a barn.  Near Star City, AR.

58/75

Defoliated Cotton Near Montrose, Ashley County

Defoliated Cotton near Montrose, AR

6X8, Oil on Panel

SOLD

This was my third plein air from Day 2 of my recent SE AR trip.  Inspired by some of the paintings and photography that I had been seeing on Facebook from fellow Arkansan Norwood Creech, I was hoping to find some cotton fields to paint.  Finally, just as I was about to leave the Delta behind and go back into the Timberlands of south central Arkansas, I ran into some cotton fields.  Some of the first ones still had leaves on the plants and some other fields were either already harvested or in bad shape without the big fluffy bolls I was looking for.  But then, there was the field I had been searching for!

This is my 55th county meaning I have only 7 more to go to complete my goal of 20 for the year.

55/75

Rice Field at Dawn, Desha County

Rice Field at Dawn

6X8, Oil on Panel

SOLD

 

 

A couple of weeks ago, I took a two day paint/camp trip to the southeast corner of the state.  It was an effort to close out a large chunk of my project in a short period of time.  My overall goal was to get very solid starts on paintings in 6 out of the 8 counties in that region for which I had no photo reference material and to get photo reference material for the remaining two.  I fell just short of that goal in that I got solid starts/completions for only 5 of the 6 but I did get photo reference for everything.  Now, my goal is to fully close out that southeast corner of the state by year's end.  It's going to be hard but I do have a solid start and it is feasible.

 

This was the second painting from my second day.  The first day, I made the mistake of doing two street scenes (which I said I wasn't going to do but I have a hard time not painting those!) and also doing them at 8X10.  The first painting of that first day I started at 9:30 and finally stopped working on it over 2 hours later.  Not the way to make great time but it turned out to be a good painting.

 

I'm starting my documentation of this trip with this painting because it was the most complete of all of them.  All I did in the studio was add a few indications of tree trunks in the far trees and sign it.

 

I have a lot more things from Desha County I want to paint, including enlarging this one to a 30X40!

 

53/75

Hazen Bean Field, Prairie County

Hazen Bean Field

8X10, Oil on Panel

SOLD

 

 

I started this classic Delta scene en plein air on the same trip where I painted the Prairie School House.  I put some finishing touches on it in the studio.  A crop duster was working in the field next to this one while I painted.  I made sure I checked the wind direction and thankfully I was upwind.  I made sure I got some pictures of the crop duster and that may wind up as a painting.  Also just down the road was the place in De Valls Bluff where I had my first real BBQ sandwich.  That place will make a great painting for sure!

 

 

This painting makes 47 out of 75 counties complete and 5 done this year.  I'm way behind on my goal of 20 for this year but maybe a good weekend trip when the weather turns this fall will change that.

Prairie School, Arkansas County

Prairie School

8X10, Oil on Panel

Available

 

 

A couple of weeks ago, I took a trip out to the Delta for some plein air painting.  At the time, I thought I was about to get to go out to Idaho for some mountain biking and painting so I wanted to get some easel time before that.  The Idaho trip didn't pan out but I did get a couple of great little paintings from this trip.

 

 

I was walking through the town of Stuttgart, looking for something to jump out at me and taking pictures when I saw a sign for the Museum of the Arkansas Grand Prairie.  I knew there was a Grand Prairie Arts Center in town so I thought this might be it.  The sign told me to go 7 blocks away from downtown so I got back in the car and headed that way.  When I found it, I knew immediately it wasn't the Arts Center.  There were several pieces of antique farm equipment fronting a highway which looked to be good painting material.  I knew none of them would be things I would want to tackle en plein air right then due to the complexity so I photographed instead.  When I turned to the head back to the car, an old church steeple caught my eye.  On the other end of the museum grounds were several period buildings, the aforementioned church, a pioneer log cabin, this red schoolhouse, and a seemingly more recent fire department building.  I really wanted to paint the church but with limited time, I decided on the red schoolhouse.

 

 

Sometimes, things work out in strange ways.  I had decided before I laid down a single stroke that I would ask permission.  The lady inside looked a little bewildered when I asked if I could paint one of their buildings.  After I explained better that I was an artist painting en plein air, she asked if I would bring it in to see when done.  Long story short, this painting will be going to the museum as soon I get a frame on it to hang in the gift shop!

 

 

46/75

Dean B. Ellis Library, Arkansas State University, Craighead County

Dean B. Ellis Library, ASU

11X14, Oil on Panel

Available

This painting was supposed to be ready for my show last week but I found I had varnished it before signing it!  Uh oh.  I use Gamvar exclusively these days and it is a super easy varnish to remove.  I few wipes with some OMS and I had a place to sign it.  Now it will be heading into the Arkansas League of Artists Signature Members show.

Arkansas State University is in the Delta town of Jonesboro in the northeast corner of the state.  My son was thinking about going to school here so we took a trip up there to tour the campus.  It has been many years since I had been to Jonesboro and I was very impressed with it.  Unlike so many other Delta towns, Jonesboro seems to be thriving and I imagine ASU has a fairly large contribution to that.  ASU is the home of the Red Wolves, who play Division 1 football and basketball.  The football team has been to a few bowl games in recent years.  Interestingly enough, ASU and the University of Arkansas never play each other at least in football.  The University of Arkansas system sees no gain in playing a cross state rival.

45/75

White River Bridge at Clarendon, Monroe County

White River Bridge at Clarendon

6X11, Oil on Panel

SOLD

Some time ago I was invited to paint in Clarendon by the wife of the mayor.  She told me this bridge was about to be replaced and that it was quite a local landmark.  When I was there, I kind of honed in on the county courthouse to paint, to the disappointment of the mayor's wife I think.  I took pictures of this bridge and finally got around to painting it.  I really like this odd size for these Delta scenes and I'm making several more in similar aspect ratios for a camping/painting trip to the southeast corner of the state I hope to take soon.