December 2025

I took a photo of a muddy ranch road in February, 2005. It was after a recent rain in Dry Creek Pioneer Regional Park which adjoins Garin Park. What attracted me to the scene was the effects of light and shadow on the hills. I think I captured it pretty well.

 On a recent hike on the Ukraina Trail of Garin Park, I passed this old barn. In the past it had been fenced off so I couldn't get around the back side without climbing the fence. This time the fence was gone so I walked around to get a better view and took a photo. I liked all the shadows and angles so I painted it. It wasn't the first time — I painted it several years ago viewed from the other side.

I chose to do something a bit challenging and try to paint from a photo I took in September, 2004. This was a close up shot of Rock Creek in the eastern sierra near the East Fork Campground where we camped several times. I've always been fascinated by what I see in moving water and I often try to capture it in photos. My challenge here was to try to make it look like real water, and I think I did that pretty well.

 In my younger days I was a big fan of the photography of Ansel Adams and anything about the Sierra. I had come across one of his photos that really impressed me. It was a view of Mount Clarence King in Kings Canyon N.P. The photo somehow emphasized the great height of the peak above the deep canyon. In thinking about what to paint next, I remembered that I had noticed the peak on my hike of the John Muir Trail, so I looked up my photo and used it for this painting. At the time of the hike it was just another typical mountain view, but now I saw that it meant something more to me. By the way, Clarence King was a member of the expedition led by William Brewer which in the 1860s spent four years exploring California, and King wrote a book about his experiences entitled "Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada". It's an exciting and rather sensational account of his adventures. Brewer's book, "Up and Down California" is one of my favorites and it is an honest and complete account of the expedition.

November 2025

On October 18, 2025, millions of people all over the country and around the world gathered to protest the authoritarian regime of Donald Trump. We joined a crowd of a thousand or so at the Hayward City Hall. It was totally peaceful but it was good to see that so many feel like we do. I took a bunch of photos with my phone and thought about combining some of them to show more of the crowd, but I finally chose this view with the city hall in the background which seemed to sum up the occasion. It took longer than my usual paintings and I worked on it over three sessions of my open studio class.

One afternoon I went for hiking after my painting class. I didn't want to drive far, so I went to the Zeile Creek Entrance to Garin Regional Park. I did a loop from the creek past the barn where we once boarded our horses. It's been closed for years and I could see that a large section of the roof of the main barn has caved in. It's too bad because we liked riding on the trails of Garin from there. Near the creek I noticed some leaves from a big leaf maple, and I took a photo. Sometimes I find beauty in a simple close-up view of the natural world.

On another afternoon after my painting class I went to Sunol for a short hike. I started off up the Canyon View Trail heading towards Little Yosemite, but I had forgotten that the trail is quite steep at first. When I reached a cross trail that would take me back down, I sat on a rock and thought what to do. As I was sitting, I noticed this oak tree on the hillside that seemed to glow, and I took a photo. I decided that I was tired enough and took the cross trail back down.

We rented a little house near downtown Hayward from 1975 to 1986 at 1299 Russell Way, and just down the block was an interesting old house that backed up to the creek. We used to walk by it whenever we walked that way, and one day I took a photo of it. Sometime in the 80s it was torn down to build the senior living facility Casa Sandoval, so now it is just a memory.

October 2025

Our friend, Marty just spent a month traveling in Italy and she sent some photos of her trip. One of them was a beautiful shot of the Grand Canal with several gondolas on it. I don't usually use other people's photos for paintings, but I thought that this one would be fun to paint and it did have a personal connection since Marty is a good friend. I changed the layout from portrait to landscape by cropping and adding a bit to the building on the left. I used a fine tip masking fluid applicator to do the light reflections. I worked on it during a couple of sessions of my open studio time at the senior center and got a lot of compliments from the other artists.

In October, 2023, we were in Santa Fe, staying with our friends, Greg and Nancy. They took us for a drive up into the nearby mountains and the aspens were in glorious color. I took a bunch of photos and I chose this one to paint from because I loved how the yellow leaves stood out against the dark firs.

September 2025

One of our favorite places near Mammoth Lakes is Hot Creek. It is a geothermal area where hot springs come up into the cold water coming from the mountains. Swimming there is dangerous and forbidden but we like to go there just to walk along the banks and enjoy the beauty of this high desert area. We were there right after Labor Day this year and our visit inspired this painting.

We didn't do any real hiking on this trip to Mammoth, just a few short walks. I was hoping to find a nice scene for a painting that gave a feeling of what it was like to be there in the mountains. As we were driving home over Tioga Pass, we stopped for a walk on a short nature trail around several little lakes and took some photos, and it turned out to be just about what I was looking for. The painting was a bit tricky to do without any masking, but I like how it turned out.

My "class" for art at the Senior Center has been pushing me to keep coming up with new ideas for paintings so I'll have something to work on when Tuesday comes around. This one started with a photo that I took in 2006. We were staying at Mammoth Lakes and went for a hike up to Sky Meadows. It was a hard hike, but a beautiful spot and Darby had a good time racing around the meadow.

August 2025

Sydney is an old friend who has a horse at our barn. She is just a few months older than I am and the horse, Cheyenne, is also quite old. He has a problem with his legs that means that he can't be ridden or turned out. He is mostly very calm and patient, but sometimes he gets excited and needs to move. A couple of months ago, Sydney and her friend, Jonathan, were walking Cheyenne around the barn when he made a quick movement which startled Sydney and she fell and broke her hip. She is slowly recovering, but she has been unable to see her horse for a long time. Some years ago Sydney asked me to paint Cheyenne and I turned her down, telling her that I wanted to stay free to paint whatever I felt like painting. Today that feels kind of selfish, and so I made this painting to give to her.

I chose to paint another one of my photos from Point Lobos. Actually, it was two photos. My first photo only showed one branch of the left-hand tree. At the time I thought that it might be a good scene for a painting, so I turned to the left and shot another one with the tree, and combined them when I did the painting. I like the way it turned out.

I found a photo I took in 2004 of the trail up the canyon from Twin Lakes, near Bridgeport. My first time up this trail was in 1957, when I started a boy scout backpacking trip here. Since then, we have done it a number of times and always really appreciated the beauty of the place. I love the pine forests and aspens, the meadows and sagebrush flats, and the rugged mountains all around. This is another painting that I think turned out well.

We took Zim up to Chris and Claire's place for five days as a little vacation for all of us. The weather was hot but it was a nice break for us. Maureen got a couple of lessons with Chris and we got to spend a lot of time with Claire. Zim was in the middle pasture with Bodhi and they got along very well. One day we were watching from above when Chris was doing the afternoon feeding and it inspired this painting.

July 2025

For many years when our kids and grandkids were growing up we did an annual winter weekend in the mountains. We would rent a cabin in the Sierra, usually near Arnold, and spend lots of time playing in the snow. I also enjoyed just wandering around taking photos. I liked places with lots of smooth, untracked snow. This painting was inspired by a shot from 2005.

In September, 2003 we made a trip to western Canada and spent several days exploring the Sunshine Coast. It's an area of the mainland coast about 50-100 miles and a couple of ferry rides north of Vancouver. It is reputed to have more nice weather but otherwise is similar to Vancouver Island. We did some hiking in provincial parks along the way even did a little kayaking. This painting is based on a photo from that trip. We went back again in 2019, and found it still beautiful but rainy.

Looking through old photos, I found one of Mono Lake that I took in 2005. We happened to arrive at the south shore area just at sunset and three gulls conveniently appeared in the foreground. The colors were rather subdued, so I used some artistic license and intensified them in the painting. This work marks the beginning of a new routine for me. My friend, Terry Preston, encouraged me to join a group of artists who meet weekly at the Hayward Senior Center. It's listed as a class but there is no instructor or leader, just an open studio for whatever the participants want to do. So I went last Tuesday and did most of this painting while enjoying the company of about a dozen lively senior women artists.

 In 1995 we had just arrived in Edinburgh, Scotland. We got off the train at Waverly Station and found the tourist office where they helped us make reservations at a B and B. We climbed through several floors of a beautiful shopping center and came out on Princes Street in New Town. A passing shower had wet the streets and right there was this fellow in full Scottish dress playing the bagpipes. It seemed like the perfect welcome to Scotland, and I snapped a photo which inspired this painting.

June 2025

 

On one of our days in Big Sur, we hiked around at Point Lobos State Park. As on previous visits, we had to park out on the highway, but once we were on the trails, it was beautiful as always. I was taking lots of photos of the scenery but then we came across this painter and I thought it made a nice complement to the landscape. I felt like expressing my appreciation of her painting, but I didn't want to disturb her concentration. I know how annoying an interruption can be when you are really focused on your work.

I looked through some old photos for a painting idea and came across one of a gull on the beach at Patrick's Point State Park. The photo didn't have much color so I tried to add a little more, maybe not very successfully. There is still something that I like about it, though.

I felt like painting something with buildings, and I found a photo from our three days in Paris in 2000. We were wandering around from our hotel and I looked for an ordinary street scene. I had lots of photos to choose from but this one caught my eye somehow.