More from "Productive November"!

The top drawing (charcoal and pastel) seems to me energetic and simultaneously still.  I'm captured by the ambiguity and feel satisfied that I have recorded myself in a moment I wasn't fully aware of at the time I did the picture.  Not to sound like a tired beer commercial but it actually doesn't get better than that.  Reminded of what I didn't even notice!  Or didn't dare consider?  A little like living on the edge.  That explains the energy part.
The oil portrait might have something going for it, I'm not sure.  This is how it looked about two weeks ago; I've made revisions since.  Although it isn't as loose as I might like, I've obviously taken license with color and line to fracture some of the reality....the structural, material reality...in an effort to plumb myself in the dynamic and capture something ephemeral. In my mind more important, more significant, more elusive, more satisfying than a life-like rendering.  More satisfying?  Well, maybe my satisfaction is in trying to obtain the short-lived experience and making it last.......which isn't all that different than what the representational realist has in mind but I want to remember how I felt, my emotion, my awareness.  That seems much more "active" if you will.

Two Recent Pieces

Something new/something revised

Charcoal and pastel
on paper

Oil on canvas

So, the image on top is a very recent drawing; below is the final version of all the versions that I'll layer upon this canvas.  If I do the pose again it'll be on a new support!

New

Oil on canvas

Pastel on paper

Oil on canvas
18" x 18"

Here are two new ones and a better photograph of a work I posted here earlier.
I think I'd describe all of these as expressive pieces, i.e. in a style inspired by the various schools of expressionism.  I really want to expand, experiment with, study and create in this style of image making....so much to do and so much opportunity to grow!

Productive November

Well, this month of November has been a very productive month on so many levels.  Just got a new job (working for an accounting firm), had a wonderful family Thanksgiving celebration and have made lots of art, lots of pictures and drawings.  Not going to rank anything, just pleased all around.

Oil on canvas
18" x 24"
Near Davenport Farm

Pastel on paper
18" x 24"

My limited posting here in the month of November (also had a birthday!) just means I've had myself involved in multiple activities and my neglect in posting shouldn't suggest that I haven't been busy in the studio......so, I'll present anyone who stumbles upon these pages or has remained curious about them with some new images and perhaps a comment or two now and then.

I have lots to show for the next several weeks.

Charcoal/pastel

Charcoal and pastel
on paper

A feeling too rare; incentives

18" x 24"
charcoal/pastel/bee paper

These two images have, both of them, enlivened my picture making practice and I hope set me firmly on a path more consistent with my seemingly waxing and waning desire to make expressive pieces in the tradition of the modernist, expressionist painters I so admire.  The portrait/figure above was a short exercise recently undertaken and one I am entirely pleased with.  The photo I've posted isn't too bad, save for the visible clip; can't say that about the oil.  Sorry!

Oil on canvas
18" x 18"

The landscape is a representation of a beautiful view on property where we lived  for about ten years in Duxbury, Massachusetts beginning in about 1996.  I recently found a photo I'd taken sometime ago and was inspired to use the scene as the foundation for the piece.  I've started several others with reference to that property and some from recent photos of the area where I now live.