April on the South Branch

Well now that the weather is warmer, I finally got back outdoors with my paintbox. Here's one I did last weekend - it's on the South Branch of the Raritan River near Three Bridges, NJ:

"April on the South Branch"
8x10 oil on panel

It's funny, even though I've been painting in the studio all winter, I feel pretty rusty painting en plein air. In the studio, all your supplies are nicely laid out and organized (relatively speaking). Out in the field, you carry a pretty minimal paint kit, and setting up your spot to paint isn't always so simple. Here there was a rocky cliff to my right, and very little flat ground to stand on so I placed a big flat rock in the river, and painted with one foot on that rock, the other on solid ground. This was pretty near the spot where I setup:

Besides finding a more comfortable spot to stand, there's a certain rhythm of work you develop when painting outdoors: packing your supplies and not forgetting anything important, choosing your locations, setting up your easel and laying out supplies, working in the confined space of your portable paintbox, painting quickly since the light changes so fast, chatting with canoeists as they paddle by (one thought my painting was awesome!) and a myriad of other things that add to the challenge.

I'll be painting outdoors primarily now so it will all come back to me, but that painting on the South Branch might be the last one with bare trees for a while because it's greening up very quickly around here. With the April showers here this week it almost seems like you can watch the buds opening, things are turning green so fast. Spring has definitely arrived!

Pinot to Picasso - Vintage 2008

The Arts Council of Princeton is having their annual fund raiser Pinot to Picasso this Friday, April 25. It's a wine tasting / art auction to raise money for the Arts Council. Local artists donate paintings which will be raffled off in a tombola style lottery. This is the painting I donated - it's a scene at Coventry Farm, on Elm Road, just outside of Princeton, NJ:

"Coventry Farm Boardwalk"
8x10 oil on panel

Tickets to the event are still available, details are on the Arts Council of Princeton's website. And I just love that title, Pinot to Picasso - Vintage 2008!

Winter Drive

In honor of spring, and the warm weather which finally arrived, I painted my first snow scene of the year! I regret letting another winter go by with no outdoor painting, but there was very little snow around here this winter, so I did this one from a photo of one of the few light snowfalls that we did have. It's looking down my driveway towards the street:

"Winter Drive"
24x18 oil on canvas

Here's a closeup of how I painted the drive - click this one for a larger image - I love to pile the paint on sometimes, and that seems to work well in snow scenes like this:

The Ferry House

You might have noticed that I like painting tree shadows on roadways, but this isn't a new painting, it's a new place where I'm showing my paintings:

The Ferry House
32 Witherspoon Street
Princeton, NJ 08540
map and directions
Reservations: 609-924-2488

The Ferry House is a very nice restaurant in the heart of Princeton, NJ. My paintings are up now and should be there for a few months. I've never painted right in the town of Princeton but I'm showing some paintings that were done very nearby.

I'll have 15 to 20 paintings on display, here are a few of them:

"Rockafellow Road"
8x10 oil on board

"Clayton Park"
16x20 acrylic on canvas

"Wertsville"
20x16 oil on board

"Montgomery Windows"
11x14 oil on board

The Ferry House can get pretty busy, so reservations are recommended. Owner and chef Bobby Trigg is doing pretty well for himself and will be opening 2 additional restaurants in the area soon. If you've never been to The Ferry House, it's worth a visit.

And maybe I will paint that tree shadow across Witherspoon Street in front of The Ferry House someday...

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".