February 2022

Before we went to Paris, we made another trip with Margaret and Bernard, this time southward in England. We stayed a couple of days in the Cotswolds, in a B&B in Bourton On The Water. The first place we visited was the village of Lower Slaughter, the subject of this painting. We loved the old-style houses built with yellowish stone that make it feel like going back in time. We walked a mile or so through the fields and woods to Upper Slaughter and on the way got caught in a downpour. We took refuge in an old mill which was now a little cafe, where the host entertained us by singing old songs from the big band era. It was a very memorable time.

January 2022

 

Continuing with scenes from our trip to the UK and Ireland in 2000, this one is of the Irish town of Roscommon. Most of our tour was planned by Margaret and Bernard, who drove us all over Ireland, but we had told them that the only place we knew of where Maureen had roots was Roscommon, so they included an overnight stop there. It is not a place that gets a lot of attention from tourists, so it was interesting to see what an ordinary Irish town looked like. This scene is from my photo of the center of town, but I used some artistic license and inserted the very impressive Sacred Heart Catholic Church in the background. The church is not really visible from this spot, but it not very far away. The church is such an important part of Irish culture, that I wanted to put this beautiful building into my painting.

Our Irish tour continued through Donegal and into Northern Ireland. At the Giant's Causeway, we met another distant cousin, Andrew, and his wife, Stephanie, and they joined us for the next couple of days. A little further east along the coast, we came to Carrick a Rede, where a rope bridge connects a small rocky island to the mainland. It was put up many years ago for salmon fishermen, but it's now a popular tourist attraction. The bridge is 100 ft. above the surging surf and crossing it is pretty exciting. After some hesitation, we all made it across.

Then I decided to skip acoss the channel to Paris. After three weeks in the UK and Ireland, we flew to Paris and spent three days there. We saw a lot of the city, riding the Metro and walking for miles and we loved it. One day we walked way across town to Montmartre, where I took the photo that this painting is based on, a street view with the dome of the Sacre-Coeur basilica in the background. At the time I didn't really know exactly where we were, but with a lot of searching on Google Street View, I determined that it is on Rue Norvins, and that the big gate on the left is the entrance to La Folie Sandrin. I looked up this place and found that it is an eighteenth century mansion that was used as a mental hospital in the nineteenth century. The word "folie" means madness in French, but according to one french article, the name of the place came from an obsolete french word meaning "woods". I was surprised that with the high school french that I learned 60 years ago I could get the gist of the article, but maybe I understood less than I thought.

December 2021

 

 I decided to continue with scenes from our year 2000 trip to the UK and Ireland. After several days in the area around Betley, Margaret and Bernard drove us west into Wales. One of our first stops was the town of Llangollen on the river Dee. We walked along the river with nice views of the town. I recently Googled the town and the image that appeared is this same view.

 We continued through Wales and took the ferry across to Ireland. We spent our first day exploring Dublin. At lunchtime we found a restaurant not far from St. Stephen's Green. I was curious about exactly where my photo was taken, so I recently spent some time searching with Google Street View. I found the spot on Anne Street, just east of Grafton Street. I don't have the patience to paint with a lot of fine detail, but I wanted this to show a lot of stuff going on, so I spent several days on it instead of my usual several hours. It was fun to do and I like how it turned out.

A couple of days after our time in Dublin, we arrived at the west coast and the town of Kinvarra where we stopped for elevenses. There was a nice little harbor with some interesting boats. In my photo, the sky was all uniform gray, as it often was all over Ireland, but a bit of blue sky made it a nicer painting.

From Kinvarra we headed north for a couple more days. Nearing Sligo, we stopped at Carrowmore Megalithic Cemetery, an area of ancient tombs made with very large stones. I tooks photos of the tombs, but I also took one looking across the beautiful farmland with storm clouds misting the mountains. Later, as we walked around the town of Sligo, the sky let loose with heavy rain.

A few days before Christmas, we had lunch with our friends, Terry and Mike, and Terry mentioned that she would like to have one of my paintings. We have been friends for a long time, since our kids were in elementary school together. It was Terry who talked me into joining the painting class with her about eight years ago and renewed my interest in painting. I considered what I could give her and thought maybe I could paint something new for her, and looked up some photos that I took years ago when we stayed with them at their cabin in the mountains near Chester. It was a beautiful spot on Warner Creek which runs out of Lassen Park. However, I'm not sure how they might feel about it. A few months ago, they lost the cabin in the Dixie Fire, and there is nothing left of it now. I'm hoping that the painting may remind them of the good times there and not of the loss.

November 2021

In July, 1989, my friend Gerald and I climbed Mount Shasta. In this scene we were using rented crampons and ice axes to climb a huge snowfield, from Helen Lake at 10400 ft. to Red Banks at 12800 ft. The whole climb, with about 7000 ft. of elevation gain, was one of the hardest and most exciting things I had ever done. It was a good memory and I wanted to save it with a painting.

Then I wanted to revisit another memory, my hike of the John Muir Trail in 2001, also with Gerald. Near the midpoint of that three-week trip, we were at 12000 ft. Muir Pass, on the divide between the San Joaquin and Kings Rivers, a very remote and desolate spot. At the top there is a small stone hut built by the Sierra Club in 1930 for emergency shelter. There was also a resident marmot who I included in the painting.

Next to the barn where our horses live there is a little maple tree. It's not much of a tree, but it has some pretty leaves, which caught my eye recently. I didn't want to do a lot of masking, just a few thin lines, so it was a challenge to paint a loose-looking background without painting over any of the leaves or branches. I think it worked out quite well.

 I started looking for painting subjects among my old photos from our trip to England and Ireland in the summer of 2000. We started that trip by spending several days staying with my distant cousin, Margaret, and her husband, Bernard, in the quiet little village of Betley, near Crewe, England. This was the view down the main street on one of our walks around town.

October 2021

 

I had been thinking about doing a portrait of Zim for a while, but was reluctant to try it because I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to paint him well enough. One day at Jack Brook Horse Camp, we were getting him ready for Maureen to go out on a trail ride, and I shot a close-up with my phone. I liked the shot so I decided to use it for a painting. I think it came out pretty good.

I looked around for something else to paint, and came across a photo from our trip to England and Ireland in 2000. We were with my distant cousin Margaret and her husband, Bernard, and they had been driving us all over Ireland. We ferried across from Belfast to Scotland and drove south to the Lake District of England. The first lake that we came to was Ullswater, and we stopped on the shore for a photo. Turning around and looking in the opposite direction, I noticed this beautiful farm with the misty mountains, took another shot. When I showed the painting to Maureen, she asked what were all the white dots. I thought it was obvious that they were supposed to be sheep, but maybe it's not so obvious.

 In early October, 1974, I made a trip to the mountains with my friend, Bill Dodge, and a couple of his teen age nieces who were visiting from the midwest. Our goal was to climb Mt. Conness on the eastern border of Yosemite. We drove up late in the evening and camped at Saddlebag Lake. After a cold night, I woke up at dawn and hurried up a little hill to get a photo of the beautiful pink clouds over Mt. Dana, which inspired this painting. We climbed high up on a shoulder of Mt. Conness and realized that getting to the top would be too much for us, but we did enjoy some great views. Back at camp, we packed up and left as snow began to fall, the beginning of a major storm that we were lucky to escape.

 Our horse, Zim, spent a couple of months in the Placerville area with Chris Ellsworth because of an epidemic of strangles, a serious equine disease, at our barn. We went back up there to visit Zim several times. Chris had a horse there in training, a large Friesian mare named Bella. One day we watched him work with her in the arena and I took a photo. I liked the way that the late afternoon sun lit the scene and it inspired me to paint it.

September 2021

 

In early September my painting class started up again after a year and a half of the pandemic. I was looking forward to going back, but when I arrived at the first class, I realized that it wouldn't be the same as before. Sitting in a classroom with a mask on was not so much fun and although there were only about 10 people, I didn't know who had been vaccinated, and that made me a bit nervous. I used the time to paint this view of the old ranch house at Jack Brook Horse Camp where we had been recently.

The following week at my class I started this painting of another scene from Jack Brook Horse Camp with the morning fog clearing. I inserted a couple of riders from another photo (Maureen and Christina). All I did in class was the blue sky, and then quit because I thought it was too messed up. Back at home I decided that I may as well finish it, and it is not too bad, but not one of my favorites. The fog in the trees is not very convincing. I missed the following week of class and then decided that I didn't really want to go back, so I'm just going to try to keep painting at home.

August 2021

 

For many years we have spent some time each year in this cabin near Big Sur. Because of the pandemic, we have missed the last couple of years, and when we found out that it was available again, we were happy to reserve it for a few days. Our son, Aaron, and his family decided to join us there. One afternoon, I felt like painting something, so I picked a view of the cabin as you first approach it. Ten-year-old grandson, Dylan, watched me as I started it, and then I finished it later at home.

One day, the kids discovered that they could get down to the creek that runs below the cabin deck. Three-year-old Marisol played with the sand and water while her mother, Alicia, watched. I usually avoid painting people because it's not easy to get them looking right. This time I felt like there would be nothing to lose but a piece of paper, so I went ahead with it.

A couple of weeks after going to Big Sur, we went horse camping at Jack Brook Horse Camp near La Honda. While we were there, I painted this scene, but it was another one from our Big Sur trip. We hiked out to the beach at Andrew Molera State Park where there was a lot of driftwood and lots of people. An older couple pointed out to us that there was a small rattlesnake nearby under a log. There was another one under the big log in front of all of the people in this scene, but they didn't seem concerned.