October on the Raritan River

"October on the Raritan"
16x20 oil on canvas

I know it's March, but I just painted this October scene. It's another view of the South Branch of the Raritan River a few miles from my house. I did a small plein air study here last year on Halloween Day, and based this studio painting on that study.

It's been a few months since I've painted on location, but it's starting to feel like spring and I'm looking forward to getting outdoors again with my paintbox.

Artists Gallery Group Show

The Artists' Gallery, the 18 member artists' co-op that I belong to, is having a group show at the Hopewell Frame Shop Gallery:

Artists' Gallery Group Show
March 11 - April 26, 2008
Opening Reception: Saturday March 15, 6 to 8 pm

Hopewell Frame Shop & Gallery
24 West Broad Street (Rt 518)
Hopewell, New Jersey

It's also going be the last show hosted by Abby Frantz, gallery owner. After 32 years of picture framing and almost twenty nine years of running her shop in Hopewell, Abby has decided it is time to move on. During the run of the show, the Hopewell Frame Shop will change ownership, but the new owners will continue to run it as a frame shop and gallery.

"September at Three Bridges" is one of the paintings I'll have in the show, painted on location in the town of Three Bridges, NJ this past September.

Here's the scene I started with:

And her are the steps in my painting process, ugly stages and all. (There are always ugly stages.) Right from the start, I thought the silo looked better with a rounded top on it:

The finished painting:

"September at Three Bridges"
11x14 oil on panel

Abby has been very supportive of the Artists' Gallery and has hosted shows for many of it's individual members over the years so it's sad to see her go, but we all wish her luck in her future adventures. Please come out to the opening on Saturday, March 15 and give Abby a warm send off!

Here is the current list of Artists' Gallery members, all of whom will have artwork in the show:

Beatrice Bork, Gail Bracegirdle, Jennifer Cadoff, Merle Citron, Rich Harrington, Charles Katzenbach, Joe Kazimierczyk, Alan Klawans, Sheila Letven, Florence Moonan, Taylor Oughton, Alla Podolsky, Marc Reed, J. Stacy Rogers, Doug Sardo, Carol Sanzalone, Stacie Speer Scott, and John Treichler.

Hunterdon Life

For folks not familiar with this area, Hunterdon County is the region in central New Jersey that I paint most often. The first week of each month, the Hunterdon County Democrat newspaper contains an issue of Hunterdon Life magazine, and the March issue of Hunterdon Life contains an article about me:




Sorry about the full page picture of me, and I usually don't walk around with a handful of paintbrushes - that was the photographer's idea. All kidding aside, I think the photographer, Ben Scheetz, did a really nice job and I can't thank the reporter, Lillie Dorchak, enough for writing such a great article.

You can click the above images for a larger version, or visit the Hunterdon Life website for a more readable version of the article. The images reproduced on that website are way too intense in color saturation, but the images in the magazine and the photos above are pretty close to what the paintings look like in real life.

I believe that the article about me in Garden State Town & Country Living is still out on newsstands if this one isn't enough for you.

The Buttinger House

I don't know if the 'Buttinger House' is really the name of this place but I have to call it something. The house is at a nature preserve managed by the Stony Brook Millstone Watershed Association near Pennington, NJ. It's a park I paint at pretty often. I did these paintings from some photos I took last summer - they show the front porch and a side door to the house.

"The Side Door"
16x20 oil on canvas

"The Front Porch"
24x30 oil on canvas

For an interesting bit of history: the house and land for the nature preserve were donated to the county by Muriel Morris Gardiner Buttinger, who is a pretty fascinating person. Besides studying psycho-analysis in Vienna and being analyzed by Sigmund Freud, she was active in the anti-fascist Austrian underground during World War II and later wrote about those events in "Code Name Mary: Memoirs of an American Woman in the Austrian Underground".