Cain's Ballroom ● SOLD

Browsing around Google Maps Street View the other day and decided to take a "drive" by Cain's Ballroom...a famous music venue in Tulsa. Here's a quick pen and ink sketch of the place with its famous sign you can see from I-244 on the North side of downtown. The day the Google Maps folks took the photos there were dozens of people camped out along the sidewalk in front of Cain's. I didn't have time to sketch them in the scene - but thought it would have been fun.

Ready for the Gilcrease

When the letter came congratulating me that my painting "Morning at Phoenix Cleaners" was accepted into the Gilcrease Museum's "American Art in Miniature - 2009" show, needless to say I was ecstatic! Such a worthy venue deserved the perfect frame. Thanks to the exceptional help I received from Mary and Gary of Chelsea Gallery, "Morning" resides in just the right frame now. The painting is of a charming deco building on the South side of downtown Tulsa. Mary and I scoured the mouldings to come up with just the right shade of gold - really with greenish undertones and in this substantial, handsome zigzag profile deco-style. Thanks Mary!

"Asian Moon" - Sold

I seem to be on a roll with these abstracts - in fact, I'm thoroughly enjoying the process of painting abstracts - giving my brain a creative workout.

For the latest piece I used lots of heavy texture medium, gesso, acrylics and acrylic inks including some metallic gold ink for a bit of sparkle in selected areas.

Again, the concept for this piece began with something quite different in mind, except for the color scheme. Then, as it developed, an overwhelming Asian feeling took over and this is the natural result. That process of the painting "telling me" what it needed is a very exciting part of painting abstracts.

The painting is 24 x 20" gallery wrapped canvas.

"Autumn Dance" Revised

Some minor revisions to finish the piece.

"Autumn Dance"

I LOVE AUTUMN. It's my favorite season - always has been. And, for us it's just around the corner!

I feel invigorated when I step outside on a crisp, Autumn day. The vibrancy of the colors, the swirling leaves falling, the cool breeze - all make for a most inspiring time for me as an artist.

This large abstract, 48" x 36" is my acrylics on canvas ode to Autumn. My objective was to capture the movements and vibrancy described above as well as provide a suggestive reference to winter's impending greys.

I selected a triadic color scheme of yellow-orange, blue-green and red-violet with tints and shades of those used throughout.

"Coleus"

Among other things today, I enjoyed doing a little plein air painting on the patio this afternoon. Our Coleus have been huge this year and have provided a gorgeous focal point for the patio. I used acrylics on Canson Montval Acrylic Paper - a 9 x 12" sheet of it for this painting done in the late afternoon. My goal was to really focus on color and shapes - not lots of detail.

"Yellow House" - SOLD

I've just finished this larger take on "Yellow House" based on a photo of a couple of old houses West of downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma and shared with me by fellow artist Gil Adams. I decided to crop in rather closely into his lovely photo so as to simplify and somewhat abstract the forms into fairly flat planes of color. The painting is oil on 16 x 20" stretched canvas.

The canvas was toned with Indian Yellow first and that was the lovely, warm transparent yellow used for the mixes throughout the painting. Many details were omitted to create just a warm, nostalgic feeling, reminiscent of days playing outside on a late summer day.