My studio is at my childhood home now. There was an original one car garage that opened to the alley, and a couple of years ago I spent three or four months completely renovating it to be a year round work space. One of the things that appeals to me most is painting the things I know. I dive deep into reflection over side yards, plants, canal ways, fallen trees, dead birds, and the many other things that are in my everyday existence. I love knowing the background of every part of the painting, from materials I use, what trees a bird fell from, or what year a house was built. It is layered into the finished work.

Painting at and near my childhood home brings back all my early memories of happiness and fear but most importantly I think it puts me in that feeling of timeless wonderment. Watching bugs crawl across leaves, wasps land in the pool for a drink, and that endless hum of the air conditioners. It is a time capsule and I am merely here to observe and record.

For this painting I returned to a lady banks rose my mother and I planted three years ago. It has been an unspoken goal of mine to return to it each spring to capture its beauty as it matures. This in now my third finished painting I have completed from life over many weeks. Each time I begin with wonder and excitement and end with feelings of being overwhelmed be the amount information I’ve recorded. As the rose bush grows in size I will try and push the scale of the work to encapsulate more of it.

The pieces all start some time in late February or middle of March. This year I put some finishing brush strokes on at the end of August. The honeymoon to Italy is to blame for this extremely drawn out span of time, but I always try and finish the piece when it wants to be finished. Always in the back of my head, is “make it better…” and with that in mind I work the thing until I think I can’t make the thing any better. Thankfully when one is working from observation and studies from observation you are limited by mother nature herself. For instance when returning to the piece some two months and change later, the rose bush had doubled in size and of course was devoid of all blossoms. Just an insight into how some of these pieces come together. All tools one has cobbled together over the years come into play. Drawings, watercolors, sketches, and many hours and days working directly from life. The only authentic way for me to work.

I may now put up a few images of the painting, but I shutter to include images of what the actual scene I worked from looked like out of pure disdain for constant comparison to photography. Thank you for stopping by and feel free to send me an email about painting things.