Farm Pond Morning

Farm Pond Morning

16 x 20

I walk most every morning, starting out just before dawn. As my Facebook friends know, I regularly post images of the things I see on my morning walks, usually skies and effects of light, but occasionally wildlife (deer, snakes, turtles, rabbits) and cows. I have made a few paintings over the last couple of years of early morning subjects from my walks but the Lennox Woods project has kept me pretty occupied. I made this painting for the Small Works, Great Wonders show at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum opening this November. I am looking forward to painting more morning subjects once I am out of the Woods.

The Morning Room

There are places in Lennox Woods which have the feeling of a separate space - a room if you will - that one can enter and inhabit apart from the larger surrounding Woods. Of course, it's not true, but it feels that way. One spot like this is beside a small stream which is part of Pecan Bayou, the watershed which nourishes and makes the Woods possible.

I often take a sketchbook and camp stool here and I particularly like it in the early morning hours. So, it wasn't a surprise that when I got the idea for this painting, its title -- The Morning Room - came with it.

This is a study for a larger work (30 x 40) which is in progress now. My photography, as always, doesn't capture the hazy morning light very well. But, you get the idea, right?

The Morning Room

18 x 24

detail

detail

Walking

Dawn Study

8 x 10

I am back to my morning walks. Walking is for me my most intimate connection with the landscape, my subject. I am in it and its scale (and mine) are obvious to me. Many of the artists and writers I revere were dedicated walkers- Emerson, Thoreau, Constable, Frost, just to name a few. This is no accident. Walking clears the mind and attunes the senses. It is a great pleasure, especially on these winter mornings when the beautiful, bare bones of the landscape are scattered before me.

Dawn

Dawn-Study
8 x 10

My infatuation with morning light continues. I have several larger pieces on the easel right now, but I actually did this little study before we left for Taos.

In Morning Light

In Morning Light
12 x 10

It has been so blazing hot, I am leaving earlier and earlier for my morning walk these days. The upside is that I am enjoying all the earliest bits of light while there is some residual coolness (relatively speaking) in the air.

I have one spot left (now full ) in the Drawing and Painting Trees online class starting in a few weeks and a couple of spots left in Field Sketching for Landscape Painters which begins in late September.

Morning Haze

MorningHaze

10 x 10

We've had constant rains and thunderstorms for about two weeks now. A day of sun yesterday and back to thunder and lightening last night. So far, a very odd fall.

Dawn Spills over the Hill

Dawn Spills Over the Hill
10 x 10

Summer is waning. Every morning this week its been a little cooler and the day a bit shorter. The morning sun rises a few degrees farther to the south. I love the change of seasons- when everything in nature-from the mighty Sun to the lowly hummingbird- obeys its destiny.

Notice What You Notice

Morning Haze
6 x 8
Private Collection

Last week someone asked me how I choose the subjects I want to paint. The easy answer is- they choose me. I paint the things that I notice. It sounds simple, but it took me many years to figure that out. I have a good friend who paints the figure and portraits. She notices faces but refers to anything more than a foot high with leaves as "shrubs". I, on the other hand, am fixated on shapes and negative shapes made by trees. I think we are somehow hardwired to notice certain things. So, its just a matter of paying attention-notice what you notice.

One Summer Morning

One Summer Morning - oil 6 x 5
Sold

The other morning I was out early. We had rain the night before and there were still storms to the west where the sky was a dark blue grey. In the east, where the sun was coming up, the sky had an eerie greenish cast that bathed the landscape in a veil of light I had never seen before. It felt like the world was on the cusp of changing into something else- I know that sounds a little over the top- but there it is.

This is the first small painting I've done in quite a while-it was such a pleasure to do after working on larger pieces for weeks.