I have a number of works in a new exhibit at the Grenning Gallery in Sag Harbor, NY. Check it out if you’re in the area. There is no opening due to COVID, but the gallery is open normally.
The paintings were all done either en plein air in California, or later in my studio from studies.
Here are some photos of the paintings, for those of you who can’t make it:
Our little dog Ema passed away today. She was about 15 years old, and probably a mix of miniature pinscher and rat terrier. She was found abandoned in Naples in August of 2009, and brought to Florence for adoption. As a painter’s dog, she had to move around a lot and she seemed to love going somewhere new everyday. Funnily enough, the only place she disliked was my painting studio. At the time I was doing less studio work and more plein air landscapes, so it worked out fine for both of us.
She had a good life, full of travel and adventure. She ate fresh lobster on the docks in Maine, she peed on the golden staircase at the Danieli, and she hunted crabs in the marshes of South Carolina. Despite her small size, she was very brave. She once charged a bear on a beach in Albania, she leapt from the window of my moving Land Rover to chase a stag in the Val d’Orcia, and she drove off a boar one night in Maremma. She ran across beaches and through fields from California to Nova Scotia, from Holland to the Alentejo, and from Normandy to Zagorje. She lived in Naples, Florence, Zagreb, Limburg and Estremoz, and she summered in the Hamptons, on the Dalmatian Coast, or in the south of France.
She was a muse to many and had poems, songs, and a book written about her. As an artist’s dog, she was often painted and sculpted. These are a few of the works I did of her.
She was very loved, and will be greatly missed.
Here are some video clips of her from over the years:
In a recent post I wrote about landscape painting in the Gers region of France. Here are the paintings from the rest of our summer trip. We bounced around quite a bit of the country as we had to be here and there for workshops and to work towards future exhibitions.
After the Gers, we traveled over to Bordeaux for a few days, then down to the coast between Sète and Agde for a week on the beach.
After the Gers, we traveled over to Bordeaux for a few days, then down to the coast between Sète and Agde for a week on the beach. Next we had to head up north for a workshop near Laon, so we stopped for a few days in the Loire Valley.
In Laon we had a workshop, so I didn’t get much of my own work done. We were on a beautiful property though, so I tried to paint as often as I could.
After Laon we had a couple of days to kill so we headed over to Normandy to paint in Honfleur. I’m always trying to find places where my favorite artists worked, and Boudin, Seago, Jongkind and Monet (among others) all painted in and around the small port there.
From Normandy we drove back down to the Dordogne, to paint local scenes for the V&A gallery in Sarlat-la-Canéda.
These are most of the paintings but the full summer’s oeuvre was posted at the time to my Instagram account.
Overall it was a great trip. The painting locations across France are varied and stunning, the food was amazing, and the people were wonderful and welcoming. We’ll be back again in the summer of 2020 as we have an exhibition and a couple of workshops.
I’ve recently posted a demo video of laying-in a portrait in oils using the sight-size method. I hope you enjoy it.
These days my videos go first to my Patreon supporters for three months. After three months I release them to the public on my YouTube channel.
If you get something out of these videos, please consider supported my equipment budget through Patreon. I make all these videos myself.
I’ve just returned from a number of weeks painting landscapes across France. The other paintings will be posted in the coming weeks, but I wanted to single out the work from the Gers region as it’s not an area that I’ve ever heard mentioned for landscape painting. Which is a shame, because it’s pretty great.
We were hosted by the Plieux Art Association, which organizes workshops and exhibitions in the small village of Plieux, about 15 minutes from the town of Lectoure. The workshops are terrific as the location is beautiful and the hostess is an amazing cook. The students stay in various lodgings in the village. On this course, everyone was French and I had to teach in French.
The area around Lectoure is one of the best I’ve seen for plein air painting. It’s all rolling hills, with a choice of valley and hill size, so the artists can pick longer or shorter views. It’s mostly smaller farming, so it’s not one endless field, but many smaller ones with varying crops. There isn’t much livestock, so no fences to keep artists out. A lot of the fields are either wheat or sunflowers, two very popular subjects with artists. Unfortunately we missed wheat season, as the harvest is in June.
All of France has great trees for landscape painting. They clearly get enough water, and haven’t cut the larger ones down. The Gers is no exception.
The towns as well are really picturesque. Not overly pretty, but not marred by too much new construction. They also don’t get the crazy tourism you see elsewhere in Europe these days, so it’s mostly locals, and you don’t have to pay for parking.
I also did a few larger plein air landscapes:
All of these paintings are for an exhibition next July at the Plieux Art Association. I hope to see you there.
Update: For higher resolution images, please see my Flickr Album.