Lake Time

A long weekend at Lake Pend Oreille. Always great to get away and spend time with Mother Nature.

I went on a six mile hike that reminded me of my age and questionable physical condition. I was rewarded with solitude, a sense of accomplishment and wildlife. I saw moose droppings. I flushed three white tail deer. Enjoyed the chattering of squirrels along with the lonely call of a varied thrush.

I hope everyone had a great weekend!

Throwback Thursday

 

Ten years ago I painted the labels for this series of Snoqualmie wines. It was a fun experience because one of my friends was the designer at the winery… it is who you know. It was an excuse to go out to lunch and hang around under the banner of “work”. Sadly he left the winery before the project was finished.

The end result was kind of an interesting look. It was a lot of fun to see the wine in stores, every time I went to a new grocery store I would look for it! I’ve attached two pictures I took at the Snoqualmie Winery in Prosser Washington. If you are a fan of wine this is a great area to do a lot of wine tasting. There are several dozen tasting rooms and several annual wine-tasting events. It is also on the dry side of Washington State so odds are good you will see some sunshine! .

I decided to do this post as a result of instagram. I was poking around, as people do, and just happened to come across a picture of someone with one of these bottles of wine next to a glass enjoying a summers day. Hard to believe ten years have come and gone… they come and go faster now don’t they. Snoqualmie introduced new labels a couple of years ago so you can no longer find mine in stores.

Dust Portrait

Dust PortraitI’m making a number of pretty large cow portraits. So far they are all 20″x20″. I’m trying to strike that balance between subtle atmosphere and interesting brush work/mark making. The paint in this one is harmonizing with the shining texture beneath the surface.

Last weekend I took a lot of reference photos not only of the ocean but of pastural scenery and the incarcerated cow. It seems there is no such thing as too much reference.

The Boatman

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This was one of a black bird series I was working on a few years ago. Part of that time period where I was creating paintings in unstable ways and letting them crack, run or erode. I liked the idea of a paintings forming with me just guiding the process. I have completely changed the way I paint a number of times since then but it is interesting to look back.