December 2009, Oil, 24 x 18

Stole the motif from the Flickr page of a photographer friend and took some liberties. Tried to stretch my style and loosen up. I do so little with red, so I enjoyed this.

December 2009, Oil, 28 x 22

Chelsea asked for me to make a painting for her of a vintage bike. Recruiting friends to find pictures and take pictures, and putting together my own composition from their input, this was the result. It's a birthday present for Chelsea's 24th.

November 2009, Oil, 48 x 24

During a visit to Madison on November 6, I took a walk and found a storefront with doors that caught my attention. I came home and made this painting. 

July 2009, Oil, 30 x 48

A composite from photographs taken during my last trip to Hawaii.

April 2009, Oil, 24 x 36

My watercolor painter friend Linda took a photograph of a door during a trip to Greece (I think). I borrowed the photograph to make this painting.

I like the way it turned out. For a change not a social critical painting, just a good old painting for the vestibule, or the breakfast nook in the kitchen, or the hallway. Am I getting commercial?

I enjoyed doing this and I played with a few new techniques. The leaves were challenging, but they came out ok.

March 2009, Oil, 20 x 24

This is something I have never done before: Copied another artist's work. There is a print, with a certificate of authenticity of this painting framed in our house that Trisha bought at an art fair in 1990 at the Hotel del Coronado. She liked the painting and the style and wanted a copy of it. The original is:

Barbara A. Wood - White Stockings

I don't normally do this, but there was enough challenge involved that I decided to go ahead. I don't do faces without detail. I didn't like the way the hands were done, but the colors were challenging to me, and I thought by trying to do this, it would get me out of my box. It did.

I took an old, used test canvas that had many layers underneath where I had tested several paintings before. The canvas was riddled with old, deep brush marks and texture, which gave it a good background for this.

Now I want to try some figure painting of my own in this style. I think I might be able to make it work.

February 2009, Oil, 36 x 24

A colleague and friend ask me to paint this. He told me about two blue chairs on the beach, the song Lone Palm by Jimmy Buffet (and I couldn't find a good link here) and The Blue Rocking Chair by Kenny Chesney. There should be a notebook, pink and brown flip flops and a Boston Red Sox hat.

This is what I made out of those thoughts, and everyone that sees the painting calls it one of my best.  But it's not mine, it's his, and perhaps that's why it became a good one. I need to let it go, like the people that sat in those chairs who are now walking along the beach, leaving the well worn notebook behind.

November 2008, Oil, 36 x 12

Still lives are hard for me for some reason. I arranged five pears on our kitchen counter. Then I had to run around to find the right size canvas. This is my first ever 3:1 ratio.

October 2008, Oil, 22 x 28

What a difference 30 years makes. I painted Women in January of 1979. I gave it away and haven't seen it since. My friends Val and Karen wanted the painting, so I agreed to do it again. I didn't have the original photograph, of course. I have no recollection of where I found it. So I had to paint it based on the photograph of the old painting. Here they both are, new and old.

September 2008, Oil, 24 x 30

Try to do a painting of yourself sometime and see when you are happy with it. Never.

So I just stopped and said -- that's it -- and started using it as the avatar for my blog, and that's where it is now.

August 2008, Oil, 36 x 48

During a hike in the Cuyamaca Mountains I came across a spot where lots of fire damage had occurred a few years before. The brush had grown in again, but the trees were devastated. That view inspired this fairly large painting.

May 2008, Oil, 30 x 24

Taken from a photograph we took on a tall ship cruise in the San Diego Bay in 2004. Devin wanted a "painting of a sailboat" for his 20th birthday. Here it is. Happy birthday.

February 2008, Oil, 30 x 24

I took a lot of photographs of buffalo while vacationing in Yellowstone last fall.

January 2008, Oil, 36 x 36

A portrait of Chelsea.

September 2007, Oil, 48 x 36

When driving up on the Haleakala volcano on Maui, about halfway up, looking down, I saw this scene. The clouds were rolling up. The landscape was lush and green, it was cool, and I smelled the ocean.

The painting caught the essence.

2006, Oil, 48 x 30

This is a scene from the Cuyamaca Mountains, taken during a hike in November 2004. This painting works very well in my dining room.

2005, Oil, 36 x 24

In the hills of the Santa Rosa Plateau. I can't get the colors and the feeling right. This painting should probably be painted over. I don't think it worked. It's stacked along with many others that didn't work in the garage.

2005, Oil, 36 x 36

Flowers climbing the walls of the condo where I lived then. I took a lot of artistic freedom. I gave the painting as a present to a friend in San Diego.

2005, Oil, 24 x 30

A portrait of Trisha.

2005, Oil, 36 x 36

A portrait of Devin.

June 2004, Oil, 30 x 24

I went for a bike ride on May 31st and took a picture of a horse on a field.  I came home that afternoon and started working on this painting. Ten days later it was done.

I tried to achieve a simple layout, not much complexity, and I wanted one single center and focus. I picked an animal just for added challenge. Live subjects are harder.

2003, Oil, 18 x 24

A portrait of Chelsea when she was around 16. Not such a good likeness but a viable effort nonetheless. I worked hard to get this far.

2003, Oil, 24 x 30

The war in Afghanistan made me think of the suffering of women and children. They don't make it into the media.

2003, Oil, 20 x 24

A study of nature and texture. I had difficulty with the colors.

2003, Oil, 22 x 28

This ship is a replica of the Nina, the vessel Columbus sailed to America. The Nina is built exactly like the original with similar materials and  technology, as best as we know now.

It visited San Diego a few years ago. I went on board and was amazed. I bought a photograph of the ship and just had to make a painting of it.

2002, Oil, 30 x 24

Light through the birch trees. I want to walk up to the edge of the woods, lie down in the grass and doze.

2002, Oil, 24 x 36

Light through the trees, leaves on the tiles. I couldn't resist. This is my best conventional davenport painting. People who are looking for a painting to adorn their living room invariably like this painting the best. To me, it's an exercise. If I wanted to paint so I can sell paintings, I'd make more like this. But that is not my purpose.

2002, Oil, 24 x 18

I wanted to capture the heat, the smells and the immense quiet. I think the colors are too loud and bright.

2002, Oil, 20 x 16

An experiment, trying to capture the landscape around where we live in Southern California. The rocks, the trees, the dry grasses and bare dirt is much of what covers the hills around our community. I put the buffalo there for focus, something to look at.

My father took the painting back to Germany with him last time he visited.

2002, Oil, 20 x 16

I plagiarized one of the oldest artists ever. National Geographic had a spread on cave paintings one day, and I wanted to capture the essence of primitive painting and color. This photograph does not show the depth of the color in the painting, but I think I captured the glow of the flashlight illuminating the dark rock and showing the primitive art. I like this painting a lot. It is in the hallway in my house today.

2002, Oil, 30 x 24

This painting is in my living room. My visitors call it "interesting" and "depressing." It's not a painting to hang over the couch for decoration. It's a statement. It shows the pain of helpless and hopeless victims.

Sometimes I see some Madonna and child symbolism in the picture, especially with the halo around the head of the woman in the center. I didn't notice I was painting a halo when I was doing it. The background around the head needed covering, and it just turned out that way.

This is my favorite paining and in my own opinion my best of all time.

2002, Oil, 24 x 30

The idea for this painting came from a National Geographic Magazine. Many people like this painting and call it one of my best. More about the suffering of children in male dominated societies.

2002, Oil, 24 x 30

I love the colors the old Egyptians used. I tried to capture the essence of the feeling of an old stone plate.

2001, Oil, 20 x 16

Getting the dude to look like a real person took a lot of work. I am not sure I succeeded.

2001, Oil, 18 x 24

An experiment with a landscape. I have a lot of work to do.

2001, Oil 16 x 12

When you look at this painting from a distance, it looks like there is a shoe glued to a yellow canvas. I guess I succeeded.

2001, Oil, 16 x 20

A scene from a house we lived a few years ago. I looked up from the spot where I was painting, and this is what I saw.

September 11, 2001, Oil, 24 x 18

On September 11, after I came home from work, I put the headphones on and played Neil Young's "Harvest" album. I went through my books of New York, found a good shot of lower Manhattan and started painting. I had to let the pain flow out. This painting was done between 8:00pm and 10:30pm on September 11, 2001. The towers were down. This was my therapy.

The painting is now in my office next to my desk.

September 2001, Oil, 24 x 36

I clipped the famous photograph from the local newspaper and started painting as soon as I saw this. At the time, I didn't know that this picture would become notorious as an icon of September 11th. Had I known, I probably would not have done the painting. I try to be original as much as I can. Still, this painting was finished long before the picture started showing up on postcards, in books, on banners and many other souvenirs. It's the first time I painted an American Flag.

The men turned out to look kind of oafish, but the flag is very good.

2001, oil, 22 x 28

My favorite rock musician. I took a photograph from a CD cover as the model.

2000, Oil, 24 x 30

I cut various types of fabric (linen, burlap, canvas) into shapes of branches, leaves and flowers and used rabbit skin glue to attach the pieces to the canvas. Then I put a coat of Gesso over it. Then I painted the result on top of the textured canvas, basically just from memory.

2000, Oil, 24 x 30

I cut various types of fabric (linen, burlap, canvas) into shapes of branches, leaves and flowers and used rabbit skin glue to attach the pieces to the canvas. Then I put a coat of Gesso over it. Then I painted the result on top of the textured canvas, basically just from memory.

2000, oil, 22 x 28

This was the first attempt ever to paint an animal (and a person). A lot of people like this painting.