Pinot to Picasso - Vintage 2015

The Arts Council of Princeton's annual Pinot to Picasso fundraiser is coming soon, and this is the painting that I have in the event - it's a scene along the Raritan River at Duke Island Park near Bridgewater, NJ.

"Duke Island Park"
8x10" oil on board

Mine will be one of 90 paintings that local artists have donated to the event.  The paintings are currently on display at Arts Council's Taplin Gallery at 102 Witherspoon Street, Princeton, NJ, and there is an Artists' Reception here on Thursday, April 9^th from 5-7pm.

The main event happens on Saturday, April 18^th from 6 – 10 pm at Herring Properties, 281 Witherspoon Street, Princeton, NJ.  It's always quite the party, and the evening culminates with the Tombola, an Italian-style lottery where the artworks are raffled off.  It's always a fun event!

More information on Pinot to Picasso, along with ticket information can be found here: http://artscouncilofprinceton.org/pinot-to-picasso-2/

Sourland Music Festival - Looking North

"Looking North"

original: 8x10" oil on board
(giclees prints available)

Today is the 8th Annual Sourland Music Festival and Silent Auction, Saturday, July 16, 2011 from 4-11 pm.

A giclee of my painting "Looking North" will be one of the items available in the silent auction.  This scene is on Longhill Road on the north slope of the Sourland Mountain, a short walk from my home, so I thought it would be appropriate for this event.

The Music Festival if a fund-raiser for the Sourland Planning Council - a non-profit organization working to protect the ecological integrity, historical resources and special character of the Sourland Mountain region.

Besides the musical lineup, there will be food vendors and tables where local artists and craftsmen will show their wares.  Should be fun - bring your own chair or blanket, and something to protect you from the sun (it's held in an open field).  More information available on the Sourland Music Festival website.

Paintings from the Gardens

For the third year in a row, Artists' Gallery teamed up with the Kalmia Club. Back in the spring, we painted on the annual "Hidden Gardens of Lambertville" tour. This coming weekend we're having a special exhibit of our paintings from the gardens. A portion of the sales is being donated to the Kalmia Club in support of the Club's community efforts.

You can see the show Friday, Saturday & Sunday, Oct 16-18 during normal gallery hours of 11am - 6pm. Or join us for the Gala Reception on Saturday, Oct 17, 4:00 to 7:00 pm
at:

Artists' Gallery
32 Coryell Street
Lambertville, NJ
map & directions

I did something a little bit different this year - instead of painting vistas of the gardens, I did a series of small 5x7" flower portraits:

I hope you can make it to the show. If you need some additional incentive, the Kalmia Club always puts on a very nice reception at our gallery and I'm sure that this year will be no exception.

D&R Greenway Land Trust Anniversary and Silent Auction

"Cedar Ridge Woods"
11x14 oil on panel

As I reported back in May, the D&R Greenway Land Trust invited a group of artists including myself to paint on some of the properties they've preserved and our work would be shown in September. Well, that time is approaching! In addition to a group show of our work, each of the artists is donating 1 piece to the Land Trust for a silent auction. "Cedar Ridge Woods", shown above, is my donation.

The silent auction is just part of the D&R Greenway's 20th Anniversary, Celebrating 20 Years of Land Preservation & Stewardship which will be held:

Sunday, Sept 13, 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Johnson Education Center
One Preservation Place, Princeton, NJ 08540
Phone: 609.924.4646
[map & directions] (please note the detour mentioned below!)

Reception - 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm: Cocktails and hors d'oeuvres prepared by The Ferry House (where I have an ongoing exhibition of my work), an auction of specially commissioned D&R Greenway landscapes followed by an Award Presentation at 6:30 p.m. where Representative Rush Holt will be presented with the 2009 Donald B. Jones Conservation Award.

Tickets for this event are $100 per person, RSVP by September 8 - you can reach them at 609.924.4646.

To preview the paintings which will be auctioned, visit the Johnson Education Center or visit www.drgreenway.org - an Auction Gallery link should appear there sometime this week.

A separate reception for the group show of our work will be held on Friday, September 25, 5:30 - 7:30 pm, and I'll post more about that later. (This event will be free of charge).

Please note: a bridge is being replaced on Rosedale Road and you cannot reach the Johnson Education Center by driving east on Rosedale from Carter Rd. You must take Rosedale west from Elm Road / Great Road.

Heritage Conservancy Benefit Sale at Artists Gallery

"Hortulus Farm"
14x11 oil on canvas

Artists' Gallery members are having a special one-weekend only exhibition and sale entitled "A Brush With Nature" to benefit the Heritage Conservancy, an organization that preserves a great deal of the natural and historic heritage of this area. We painted some of the properties preserved by the Conservancy, and will be exhibiting them this coming weekend. 40% of the sale price of these especially prepared artworks will be donated to the Heritage Conservancy as well as 10% of everything else for sale in the Artists' Gallery this weekend.

I'll be showing 2 paintings of Hortulus Farm, a pretty fascinating property in Bucks County with extensive gardens open to the public. It's well worth a visit if you're in the area.

Friday evening will be a private opening reception for Heritage Conservancy donors, and the exhibit is open to the public 11am - 6pm, this Saturday and Sunday, Sept 20 and 21 at:

Artists' Gallery
32 Coryell Street
Lambertville, NJ
[map & directions]

And don't forget, my 2-man show with Stacy Rogers, "Faces & Places", is still going on at the Artists' Gallery through October 5.

Day on the Land - Crystal Springs

"Day on the Land" - for some reason that reminds me of the classic Brian Eno recording "On Land", but instead of music... you guessed it - this has to do with painting.

Yesterday was "Day on the Land" - the 3rd annual fund-raiser / paint-out organized the the Hunterdon Land Trust Alliance, aka the HLTA. Last year, it was at the Dvoor Farm, this year it was held at the Crystal Springs Section of the Teetertown Preserve near Califon, NJ. Crystal Springs is some recently preserved parkland - 291 acres of mature forest, active farmland and 5 ponds which are the headwaters of Spruce Run Creek.

This corner of New Jersey is new to me and the last few miles approaching the park, it felt more like I was in Vermont than in New Jersey. Since it's new to me, I went there a couple of weeks ago to check it out and I did this painting at one of the farm fields:

"Crystal Springs Fields"
8x10 oil on panel

Yesterday was the paint-out, and here's where I setup to paint - it was hot out, so I looked hard for a spot that would remain shady for a hours. If only I could find a spot where the horseflies weren't biting! This lane led to the farmhouse (which is no longer there):


While painting, one of the HLTA volunteers was gracious enough to bring sandwiches and snacks to the artists, and even offered to help carry my stuff back when I was finished - a nice change from my usual plein air routine of finishing the day tired and hungry! Here's the finished painting:

"Crystal Springs Farm Lane"
14x11 oil on panel

This painting, along with the work of the other painters and photographers out that day, will be auctioned off on October 19 at the Prallsville Mills in Stockton, NJ. Funds raised will go the HLTA. I'll post more details closer to that date.

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!

Benefit Weekend!

Saturday, Oct 20 is the big day for 2 benefit events that I participated in this year:

4:00-7:00
"Hidden Gardens Revealed"
at the Artists' Gallery, 32 Coryell St., Lambertville, NJ

7:30-?
"The Art of Conservation • Landscapes as Inspiration"
at the Hunterdon Museum of Art, Clinton, NJ

First: Back on June 9, Artists' Gallery members joined the annual Hidden Gardens of Lambertville tour by setting up and painting in the gardens during the tour. The artists "added a wonderful compliment to our event" said Fran Bardusco, Garden tour chairwoman, "and now these beautiful paintings are going to be offered for sale with half of the proceeds being donated to the Kalmia Club to help benefit the club's community efforts."

The exhibition and sale of the paintings that we did runs from Saturday, October 20 to Sunday, October 28 at the Artists' Gallery located at 32 Coryell St., Lambertville. Opening reception for Kalmia Club's "Hidden Gardens Revealed" is on Saturday, October 20th from 4:00 to 7:00. Kalmia Club members will be handling the food and refreshments, and I'm told that they're all great cooks.

Second: On Sept 23, I joined 26 other artists in "A Day At The Farm", a paint-out at the Dvoor Farm in Flemington, NJ. We all donated our paintings from that day to the Hunterdon Land Trust Alliance. This Saturday Oct 20, beginning at 7:30, they'll be auctioned off at the Land Trust's Fall Gala at the Hunterdon Museum of Art in Clinton, NJ. This should be a pretty nice affair too. More details can be found on their website, along with a preview of all the art work to be auctioned off.

That gives me 1/2 hour to get from Lambertville to Clinton. It'll be a busy day for me!

The Dvoor Farm Paint Out

Well, I went to the paint out at the Dvoor Farm and it was a heck of a lot of fun! I knew 6 of the 27 artists who were out painting that day. (There is safety in numbers!) There was live music and a big crowd of people wandering around the farm. The smell of buffalo burgers and freshly baked pizza was wafting through the air all day. Patricia, an artist painting with acrylics near me kept saying how she loved the smell of my oil paints and turpentine. Me, I much preferred the smell of those buffalo burgers.


Here's the scene I chose to paint - at the start, the wall was getting full sunlight:


By the time I finished, that wall was completely in shadow. That's just one of the big challenges of painting on location, especially with buildings - the light changes so quickly, that after a certain point, you're really painting from memory. I don't have a good image of my finished painting, but the Land Trust will be proving me with one:


I took these pictures at the end of the day when the crowd was already winding down, but it was a lot more lively earlier in the day:



I used to be a pretty shy person - still am, I guess - but my recent adventures in the art world have certainly helped me make progress on that front. The paint out really was a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to attending the Fall Gala on Oct 20, when the paintings will be auctioned off.

The Dvoor Farm is a really incredible property, and I'm so happy to know that it's being preserved. I'm pretty sure I'll be painting back there again.

A Day on the Farm

On Sunday, Sept 23, I'll be participating in my first "paint out". What's a paint out? A paint out is an event where a number artists paint outdoors, en plein air, and the general public is invited to watch. The paintings produced are usually sold or auctioned off soon after, often to benefit a worthy cause. It's a bit of performance art I suppose.

On Sept 23, 2007, the Hunterdon Land Trust Alliance is having their annual "A Day on the Farm" - a fun filled day of activities at the Dvoor Farm on the Rt 12 circle just outside of Flemington, NJ. It's the big barn with

DAIRY COWS - HORSES

painted across the roof in big bold white letters - you can't miss it! The paint out is from 9 am to 2 pm - they'll also have live music, good food, a farmer's market, a puppet show for the kids and more - visit www.htla.org for a complete list of activities. It's free of charge and everyone is welcome to attend.

All paintings produced at this event are being donated to the Hunterdon Land Trust, to be auctioned off at their Fall Gala on October 20, 2007 at The Hunterdon Museum of Art in Clinton, NJ. Since I do so much painting in Hunterdon County, I'm happy to do my part, and I hope we raise a lot of money for the Land Trust.

Do Sparrows Dream...

"Do Sparrows Dream of Oceans Deep"
acrylic on wood

At the Lambertville Artists' Gallery, we're participating as a group in "Bucks County Birdhouse Style" - a Birdhouse Auction for New Hope Arts, where artist-created birdhouses will be auctioned off to benefit the New Hope Arts Building Project. New Hope Arts, Inc is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the rich cultural heritage of the area.

So I put my birdhouse kit together and thought this would be such a fun project to work on. And there my freshly primed and gessoed birdhouse sat for weeks. Waiting for inspiration. I just couldn't think of what to do with it! My plan was to paint some sort of landscape on it - rolling hills, puffy white clouds... but that idea just wasn't working and there the birdhouse sat. I thought about cows. I like painting cows and envisioned whimsical cow faces peering out from each side of the birdhouse. But that idea wasn't working either. Finally, I thought of fish - I doodle cartoonish fish all of the time (I have no idea why) and thought that a 'birdhouse as aquarium' would be funny. Once I had this idea, the rest was easy, and I like how it turned out. The fish theme also appeared on my artcards, and I used to build ceramic fish in what seems like a previous lifetime.

My next hurdle was titling it. We were asked to provide a title for our birdhouses, and titles aren't always easy for me. But this one came quickly: "Do Sparrows Dream of Oceans Deep?". With apologies to Philip K. Dick, author of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (the novel which inspired Blade Runner). And although the 1 1/4" diameter hole on my birdhouse might be a little too small for a sparrow, I'm sticking with this title!

The Gallery:
My birdhouse will be on display at the Artists' Gallery during the month of March, along with all of the other gallery artists' birdhouses. It's an amazing collection of birdhouse art, so I hope you can visit and have a look. We're at 32 Coryell Street, Lambertville, NJ. Towards the end of the month, the houses will all be taken away to auction.

The Auction:
The benefit party and auction will be held on April 1, 2007, 6:30 pm preview, 7-9pm auction held in cooperation with 5thseasongifts.com, 215-862-2780

New Hope Arts Center
2 Stockton Ave . New Hope. PA

$15/person 215.862.9606
Tickets: 5th Season . 30 W. Bridge Street