August 2026

On our 1992 trip to the Southwest, we spent a day at Canyon de Chelly, a national monument on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona. The valley floor is used for growing crops and access is limited to guided tours and one hiking trail into the canyon to some anasazi ruins against the cliffs, but roads lead to many viewpoints along the rim. We found lots of beautiful and spectacular scenery. On the hike into the canyon, near the rim, I took a photo which I used for this painting.

July 2026

 

I returned once more to my photos of Pioneer Basin from my 2008 backpacking trip with my friend, Gerald. I think what caught my eye first was the colors in the water. In my mind, this is a very special place, but it is also typical of hundreds of similar high sierra lakes, and I don't think I'll ever get tired of painting them.

On our 1995 trip to the British Isles, we spent a day in York. At the time I was working with a guy from Yorkshire and he recommended that we go there. We found it very interesting with lots of history going back to Roman times. We were walking through an old section of town when I saw the Minster towering above and shot a photo, which inspired this painting.

On a 1992 trip to the Southwest, we spent a day at Mesa Verde. We went on one of the tours of the ruins and found it very interesting. I chose this view for a painting because it shows the whole experience -- the ruins built into an alcove in the cliff, and the tourists wandering around.

June 2026

While we were staying in Big Sur, we went out hiking in Palo Corona Regional Park in Carmel Valley, just a couple miles east of highway 1. After crossing the remains of an old golf course and crossing the Carmel River, we come to wide open rolling grassland and old oak trees, and a distant view of the ocean. It was an easy, peaceful 3 mile hike and we enjoyed it.

I wanted to paint something inspired by ocean views, so I chose one of my photos from 2004. We were camped at Patrick's Point and looking down from the cliffs when a group of pelicans flew just above the surf. It turned out to be challenging to paint the blue water with all of the foam and keep the pelicans from getting lost in the waves.

After missing a couple of years, we were able to go to the cow clinic in Novato. Maureen and Zim were able to spend three days working with cattle, something that they both love to do. On the last day, Ann got on Chris' horse, Shiner, to do some cutting, and I chose my photo of them to paint because it showed the action best. I've painted a few scenes like this before and always wished that I could show the motion better. I thought about trying to add some blur, but decided that it would just make a mess.

One day when we were out on the trail, I got ahead of Maureen and Judy, and turned around to take a photo. Usually I can't do that because I am too slow to keep up, but this time they had stopped for a couple of minutes and I went on ahead. In my painting I wanted to catch all of the light reflecting from the leaves by using a lot of dry brush technique. It kind of works, but it's not one of my favorites.

May 2026

Near the end of our 2001 hike of the John Muir Trail, Gerald and I had just climbed Mt. Whitney and were coming down the east side very tired and looking for a place to stop. We saw a nice little lake off the side of the trail (Mirror Lake) so we went down and set up camp. A little later we wandered over to the lake outlet and found a sign saying "No Camping". It was late in the day and we guessed that it was unlikely that anyone would see us there, so we stayed. The next morning we finished the hike to Whitney Portal and were picked up by Maureen.

Last week, we spent a few days at the cabin in Big Sur and we went out intending to walk on the headlands at Soberanes Point. We were hoping for the beautiful clear weather of the previous couple of days, but the coast was all in fog. We walked anyway and found it surprisingly beautiful with the surf fading away into mist. We both liked this cypress on the cliffs and I chose to paint it.

April 2026

I needed an idea for a painting for my next open studio class. I was hiking along while Maureen and Judy rode Zim and Mumu, and saw a bunch of poppies on the side of the trail and took a couple of photos. Previous paintings of poppies were a bit unsatisfying, and I wanted them to really pop out from the background, so I used a lot of darker green. It's kind of messy, but at least the colors stand out pretty well.

Among some old photos I found one that wanted to be painted. It's from one of our trips to Canada when we spent some time on Salt Spring Island. The scene is in Ruckle Provincial Park on a trail along the northeast shore. We've been to the island several times and we always love it there. One of the women in my painting class said that she grew up in Vancouver and knew the island. She said she loved the arbutus trees on the shore. We did too, and we noticed that the arbutus is the same tree that we call madrone in California.

We took Zim up to Placerville for the annual retreat. As usual, I took quite a few photos, but found most of them uninspiring since they look much like the thousands of clinic photos I've taken in the past. But up in Chris and Claire's place, I noticed a large photo on the wall, a tight shot of a horse and saddle. I thought about painting something like that, and I used a shot of Chris on his number one horse, Picasso. I think it worked out pretty well as a painting. It focuses on the saddle area where most of the action takes place while riding. If I had included the whole horse and rider that area would have been much less noticeable.

March 2026

I had been thinking of doing another painting of Zim, and one day he was standing outside of the barn and he turned his head just right to catch the sunlight on his face and I snapped a photo. It's kind of an odd pose, but I like it. I worked on the painting over a couple of open studio days at the senior center and I think I caught his look pretty well.

One of my favorite photos from the John Muir Trail was one of Garnet Lake with Mt. Ritter and Banner Peak in the background. I had painted the scene a few years ago, but was not satisfied with it. This time I painted it quite quickly in one session of my open studio class and I like it much better than my first try. One thing that I aim for is getting washes dark enough the first time rather than doing many layers. It makes a fresher looking painting. On this one I didn't do it 100%, but did pretty well.

February 2026

Near the end of our 1995 trip to the UK and Ireland we ended up in Bath. It was a rough day, after being stuck in a very hot train for hours, walking for miles trying to find a place to stay for the night, and finally settling for an old hotel next to the train station that was quite noisy. Then the next day we found a better place to stay and began enjoying this beautiful little city. In this view, the river Avon flows through the center of town.

 

We have lived on Kelly Street for nearly 40 years now. Down at the bottom of the hill, Kelly ends at the intersection with B Street and Center Street. Whenever we come home we always pass this funky little collection of shops on the corner. I've always thought that it made an interesting scene and one day, while waiting at the stop light, I took a photo with my phone, and used it to make this painting. Val's restaurant, which is just out of the frame on the left, is famous all over the area, and some day may inspire another  painting, but this time I focused on the bar on the corner, Curly's Place.

January 2026

Maureen suggested that I do a painting based on photos from our 1997 trip to the east coast. I looked through them and didn't find any that were very inspiring, but I did find one of the beach at Ocean City, Maryland, that had some potential. I remember being amazed at the whole scene when we were there. Huge crowds of people everywhere and the long boardwalk filled with with tacky little souvenir shops. It was like the beach at Santa Cruz taken to the extreme. Maureen's childhood friend, who we were with, said it was like a little United Nations with all the diversity, but as you can see it was nearly all white.

 I picked another scene from my 2001 hike of the John Muir Trail with my friend, Gerald. This is our campsite at lower Palisade Lake after a hard day of climbing the Golden Staircase with heavily loaded packs after being resupplied by Aaron and Alicia the previous day.

I happened across a photo from our trip to Mammoth last September that I thought I could use for a painting. I remember having that in mind at the time that I took it. As we often do, we went for a walk at Hot Creek and found this high desert scene on the canyon slopes.

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.

May 2025

Near the end of April, we went to a clinic at Chris Ellsworth's place near Placerville. It was cold and wet much of the time but there was a good group of people and we had fun. At the end of the last day Chris got on his horse, Picasso, and loped around the arena. I tried taking a couple of photos, hoping for something to paint, but they weren't ideal. Then I looked at Maureen's phone and she had taken a video of the ride. I managed to find just the right frame and used it for this painting. The result was not as good as I had hoped. Maybe some more work on the background would have helped, but I didn't feel like spending any more time on it.

In mid-May, we spent four nights at the cabin near Big Sur. It was nice to get away and we did some good short hikes, but my memory of it is tainted by the fact that I somehow lost the cabin key and spent a stressful half day to fix the problem. On the way there, just before the turn off from highway 1 to Palo Colorado Road, there it this great view of the coast and just as I have done many times in the past, I pulled over and took another photo. Back at home, I painted it with memories of our recent trip.

Looking through some older photos, I came across one taken in 2004 of Little Lakes Valley. It's one of our favorite places to hike when we are in the eastern Sierra and I've taken many similar photos. Mosquito Flat at the end of the Rock Creek Road is the highest Sierra trailhead at 10,300 ft., and we definitely feel the altitude there. A mile or so up the trail takes you to a string of beautiful lakes surrounded by high peaks. We're planning to go back to Mammoth Lakes this September, but this hike, though short, may be beyond our ability now.

April 2025

In Capitol Reef N.P. there are the remains of an old farming community called Fruita. On our 2023 trip, we stopped there to visit a small gift shop. Nearby there was this old wagon and a barn with several horses. It was a picturesque spot and I took several photos. I used one of them for this painting.

Maureen saw that I was looking through old photos for a painting idea, and she pointed to a small painting on our living room wall and said "Why don't you paint that?" It was just about the only art that we had ever purchased. In 2000, we spent three days in Paris. On our last morning we were just about to leave on the train to London and we walked by this cafe near our hotel. It was "Les Deux Magots", a place that was a famous hangout for artists and intellectuals in the 30's. A street painter was working out in front, and on an impulse, we bought one of his paintings. The oil paint was still a bit wet and we had to be careful carrying it on the train with all of our luggage. I looked through our photos and found a couple from that time and put together this painting. It's a bit messy close up, but at a distance it brings back good memories.

On our 2000 trip, we spent a couple of days in Brecon, Wales. We went there to see the Brecon Beacons, a mountain range which is a National Park. We spent a day hiking up to the highest peaks (2907 ft.), and saw some great views. We also looked around the town a bit and came across this scene with a boat on one of the canals. We wanted to see some of Wales because we thought it would be different from England, but found it to be much the same except for the strange spellings of place names.