Inspirations & Paint Trip Outings

Sitting in open-air bleachers watching a pick-up basketball game somewhere in Tennessee while enjoying a slice of homemade apple pie. This is how I do a painting trip. My paints are in the van, so it counts as a painting trip... I stared at the trees and rocks for a while at Daniel Boone's park, again, keeping the paints fresh in the van. As soon as I finish my pie I’ll take up my pencil and sketch someone just to give credit to the outing. Other sketch options were a nice little cafe where the pie was, or a quart of sauerkraut (to keep regular), which also looked good.

Too many hamburger places pulling at me... These small town restaurants and cafes are my source for inspiration. There is something about the word itself, "cake", that is art to me. Other inspiring art is Gene Kelly in An American in Paris. Maybe I can't dance but I am a fairly good painter. Dancing in the rain for me? A dry library is more my style. The life of Edward Hopper is my splashing in the street - I’ve seen that scene a hundred times. Jordan is my Leslie Caron.

Why do I leave the studio for these painting trips? With the pie gone, the kid standing under the basketball goal is first for my pencil. Later, with seven kids safe in my book, I walk back to try that chocolate cake.         

A Diet Coke and chips for dinner in a less than a four-star motel. Paint brushes make useful chopsticks for eating sauerkraut from a blue canning jar while watching "Shane". Jack Palance was great, another actor that, just watching him come on screen, was inspiring. These little inspirations made me want to do my best with what I did. Painting Jordan nursing Josphine is my “Dancing in the Rain.” A painting of an old fallen oak tree is Jack Palance dying in a cloud of gunsmoke in that old saloon/dry goods store. 

Turning the lights off, I think I’ll go back to Daniel Boone's park and take my paints out of the van. 

Worn Chair of Creation

120 hours of chaos conversion. Finished another garden painting. I start them by splashing colors onto a canvas. Out of the mess I get from the splashing of lots of different colors on a canvas, comes possibilities. I spend anywhere from 120 to 200 hours making sense out of what I see before me.  Flowers come to mind most times. I find this way of painting the most relaxing and quite stimulating. It is my way of tossing off the restriction of a subject. I do find subjects involving a living creature rewarding as well, like the nude, where mistakes are so clearly visible, even to a child. 

Teaching to me is telling a student, “It's your canvas to do what you want.” Is the subject meaningful to you? My landscapes are scenes from my past. Sunday car rides with Dad giving a history lesson of what appears to be a corn field. That painting of a barn? It’s the story of Great Great Granddad who fought in the Civil War. 

The chaotic garden growing on my canvas teases and delights my mind. That splash of blue wants attention again, I call on my past. What were those flowers Mom had Dad build a trellis on the side of the garage for? A sip of hot chocolate, a turn about in my chair and a faint vision gives me the stroke I need. A dying geranium leaf catches my eye as I take another quick spin in my worn chair of creation. Where to put it? It is just the shape for that muted red that mixed with the green running wild across the canvas. 

Richard was right when he said never pick off a dying leaf from a plant, let it fall off when it's ready. Past and present are elements in every painting. Mom's garden and Dad's stories emerge from my palette with every painting. Life is always my subject.