“Fruit Plate” oil on canvas panel, 8×10″
I started the painting because I was making a salad and had these yummy cherry tomatoes left over, and the pattern they made in their container caught my eye. I only had to toss them randomly on the plate a few times to recreate the effect in the studio. It’s as close to Pollock as I’m going to get.
“Red Barn” oil on canvas panel, 5×7″
I debated whether I should call this one “Red Barn”. Of course, it’s a good title – the subject is clearly the red barn. But I worry about running out of titles sometimes. What will I call the next painting that has a red barn?
“Spring Pasture” oil on canvas panel, 5×7″, SOLD.
The cows I mentioned in a previous post cooperated later in the day, and I quickly sketched them as they roamed around. The remarkable thing about this painting is how realistic the cows are when you stand about 8 feet back from the painting. I’m not sure how well the effect will translate on the computer. It really surprised me when I got the painting home and was able to look at it from more than a few feet away.
“Eucalyptus Grove” oil on canvas, 12×36″
One of my personal goals has been to try and find a way to do studio paintings that have the same life as my plein air work. I’m finding that one of the keys to good studio paintings for me is viewing my reference photos on the computer, rather than trying to print them out. And I think the other piece of the puzzle is doing the studio painting as soon as possible after completing the field study, so it’s easy to tap into the sense memory of what made that place special. This painting grew out of a frustrating plein air session, where I couldn’t seem to make things work. I realized when I got home that part of the problem was that the painting wanted to be long and skinny instead of my usual format. So I listened to what the painting had to say.
“Small Red Barn” 5×7″ oil on canvas panel, SOLD
I found this low red barn near Sebastopol the other day, and when I drove up there was a small herd of dairy cows in the field. Perfect, I thought, I’ll paint cows AND and a barn. But as soon I set up, they all came over to investigate the stranger standing at the fence. After checking me out they determined I was not very interesting after all and promptly went to the much less scenic part of the pasture. So I just painted the barn.
Bovine art critic
“Tall Barn” oil on canvas panel, 5×7″, SOLD
The last couple of days I’ve been obsessed with barns. I painted this one not too far from my house in the last light of the day.
“Barns with Mustard” oil on canvas, 5×7″, SOLD
This is the third painting of these two barns I’ve done (See here and here for the other two). I like them because they’re close to the house, and there’s a very quiet back road with lots of room for me to pull over and park. Oh, and I like the barns too. I did this painting on a very foggy Saturday morning, and I ended up talking to several people from the neighborhood including the owner of the barns who wandered over with coffee cup in hand to see what I was up to.
This is the last of the orchard paintings I did last week. It falls into the “not successful” category for me. When I set up, the shape of Mt. Diablo behind the low hills was so dramatic. But as I was working, it got hazier and the colors kept shifting. I foolishly changed the color of the mountain several times trying to adjust the relationships between the background and foreground, and ended up with a bunch of easter egg pastels. One of the best skills a plein air painter can acquire, seems to me, is a good memory for color.
“End of the Row” oil on canvas panel, 8×10″
I noticed after looking back through the last few posts that almost all of the recent orchard paintings were painted while I was looking towards the sun. I try to find locations where the sun is hitting the subject at an angle. That way I don’t have to squint to see what I’m painting, and I get more dramatic shadows. In the winter, it’s not a problem, the sun is low enough in the sky for most of the day that there’s pretty much always good shadows. But now the days are getting longer, the sun is higher in the sky, and I’m going to have to get out of bed a lot earlier to catch those good shadows.
“Vanishing Points” oil on canvas panel, 11×14″
I drove out to Brentwood the other day to paint yet more orchards in bloom. I did a show there last year, noticed all the orchards, and made a mental note to come back and check it out in the spring. So I packed up my trusty map book, which was printed in 1991 but shows elevation contours and even indicates landscape features like orchards or forest, and set out to find some orchards in bloom. I did find orchards, but I also found incredible urban sprawl. The old map book shows extensive orchards around the small town of Brentwood, and I couldn’t help noticing that large swaths of the landscape have been transformed from orchard to shopping centers and housing developments. I suppose that makes me an incurable romantic, to be disapointed by the transformation of agricultural land to big box store. 
But in the midst of all the sprawl, I was very surprised to find a pair of burrowing owls. They were in a lonely parking lot in Antioch, and didn’t move when I drove up to take their picture.