This is one of my largest paintings to date. I have had great success with my stormy sky paintings, everyone loves and can relate to weather, especially now that it is becoming more extreme.  I made a few break throughs on this one.  I had to be patient  and let the paint dry so I could add layer upon layer of paint to the sky and drag it over the underpainting in the sky and the road.

I visited Carmel by the Sea last spring and fell in love with the trees there.  They are very unusual, I had never seen anything like them. I loved how they grew right on top of the rocky shoreline. I can’t wait to return to this magical place.

I used a brayer to lay down the initial layers of paint on this one. Familiarity with the composition allows me to experiment with different techniques while having confidence of a proven format. I put in a few words of positivity as well as a few hints of fuchsia, one of my favorite colors.

When I lived in Westport, I walked almost every day at Sherwood Island, the oldest State Park in Connecticut. There is a myriad of ecosystems within the park; beaches that flow into Long Island Sound, orchards from a bygone era as well as ruins of stone walls, foundations and chimneys of old farm houses.  Woods and wetlands are home to paths that link the many beautiful areas of this park.  These five paintings are all inspired by that park and my time there. Storms would roll in over the sound in the summer, the wind would start to blow and everything  became dreamy.

This duo was inspired by a trip to Iceland. I went in March in hopes of catching a display of the Northern Lights but to no avail. The weather was extreme and churned up at a moments notice!  I tried to get to the northern part of the country several times but had to turn back every time.  We arrived and departed at dawn and the place was so silent and beautiful, I took some photos which inspired these paintings.  The painting on the left is the view of my ride to the airport, just before departure, the painting on the right is a vertical abstract to compliment the horizontal landscape. The colors are ambiguous; cold aubergine with a glimmer of warm light, washed over to reveal the silvery, icy drips.

I am interested in Abstract Expressionism, mostly because I don’t understand it very well.  I am reading Ninth Street Women, by Mary Gabriel, in hopes of getting some insight into that era. The book follows Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler and their impact on modern art.  This painting is about as close as I have come to putting a childhood memory into the paint.