These two paintings, fresh off the easel, are a little different direction from the usual for me. One day last winter we were at a friends place for dinner and on the way home we drove east through beautiful Whatcom County. The top painting is the Twin Sisters mountains, just south of Mount Baker, real pretty mountains visible all over eastern Whatcom County https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_Sisters_Mountain The low angled winter afternoon light creates these dramatic scenes that are very exciting for visual creatives. The drama of the long shadows and cool pigment of the swans set against the warm sunlit field is very compelling. The sunlit clouds were a real challenge, especially with acrylic paint, which tends to dry fairly quick shortening the working time. Lots of acrylic medium applied as I work the blended layers is the trick I use.

I just picked up my paintings from the Jansen Art Center winter exhibit. Out of 5 paintings in the show I only brought home 2 and the rest sold. I am honored to be invited to the Matzke Gallery Summer show https://www.matzkefineart.com/sculpture-park/ and have a solo exhibition scheduled at the Jansen in September 2026 https://www.jansenartcenter.org/, so I guess I better get busy. The issue with success is that it’s been challenging building a body of new work when my paintings are selling regularly. I typically work in the studio 3-4 days a week and a usual painting day is about 4 hours of actual painting, that doesnt include staring out the window, making tea, eating, which I seem to do a lot of when I’m painting. You wouldn’t think so but 4 steady hours of painting is pretty exhausting, and it takes a while to refocus my eyes. So at this rate I can produce about 12 paintings per year, more if i do a series of small work. I feel very fortunate to experience success at this point in my artist career, it does help to take my mind off the creeping fascism in this country and elsewhere. Let’s all hope for saner days ahead.