Drawings:

Generally, until now, I have treated drawing as a practical matter – something needed to roughly establish a composition before painting. As such, I don’t have a lot of drawings to show you. Below is a sampling of what I’ve done from life. Most are compositional drawings done for plein-air paintings, although I have begun to carry a sketchbook with me and draw at leisure.

I’ve also taken to drawing from Street-View on my lunch breaks. I know it’s a bit of a handicap to have a still image that already has a frame around it. It has allowed me to think more about rhythm and shapes. Especially drawing areas such as Acadia, which have such a unique shape language in the rocks, trees, and mountains. I’ll be in Acadia in person next week, and will be drawing from life while I’m there.

Hi Joe – I’m looking forward to this program!

I’ve been painting for about 15 years, and while I know that I’ve made progress in many areas, I still feel a lack of overall confidence/control in the medium. Half the time I feel like I know what I’m doing….the other half feels like I’ve just tripped while carrying a wedding cake.

I went to art-school but mostly studied sculpture and printmaking, so 90% of my painting knowledge is self taught. The few painting classes I had were less about technique and more about expression.

I split my painting time between still-life and landscape. I’ve built a decent body of work in both, but I definitely feel stronger in the studio.

My Instagram feed is a visual diary: just about everything I paint ends up there, whether it’s good or not, indoors or outdoors, from photos or from life. You can see it here.

Below are a few groups of paintings – specifically landscape, where I feel I need the most focus.

Plein-air paintings I’m happy with.

These go back to 2018. Each one is a painting that I’m overall happy with, by which I mean that I felt confident in the painting process, and that the results landed generally where I wanted. Some of these have a little touch up in the studio, but the majority of the work was done on site.

Plein-air paintings that went frustratingly bad.

These are paintings where I felt the process got away from me. In each case I was in a good location and had plenty of time, so I can’t blame my circumstances for the failure.

Studio Work

These are larger works I’ve done in-studio, using a combination of plein-air studies with a lot of photo reference. With all of these guys, I’ve always felt more in control of the process, but that could be simply knowing I can fix things if I make an error along the way.