introducing the newest member of the family

Meet sam, the new addition to the family. Sam is a four year old Maine Coon mix with 25 toes!! i think he may be deaf but it may be he just chooses to ignore me! he's a howler and is always wanting "OUT!". Each evening we take a walk down the hall to visit barbara and her two cats.lil guy and morrison. They usually hide out in the bedroom when sam comes to visit...but he finds them anyway!

Sam's no substitute for bud,of course, but he's a nice cat with his own,very unique personality.Welcome,Sam!!!

some photographs

the poet robert frost once wrote that he could sum up everything he knew about life in three words. "it goes on".

bud grows golden wings

this is a very sentimental painting i did the other night while missing bud. those of you who knew him know it doesn't do him justice; it's just my limited hand trying to convey the limitless sadness of life without him....and my hope that he is truly, in a better place.

batcha galupe

it's been a little over a week since bud died and his presence is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. to say he is missed seams way too small...

no words

1993-2009

here's what the trees turned into...an odd portrait dedicated to singer/song writer mary travers who passed on september 16. rest in peace,mary.

primer

today i am gessoing over this painting. it's already had several incarnations...."not to be seen", "lake at bear mountain" and "fog". i don't know yet what it will finally grow into, but right now it's a clean white surface to "do over". wouldn't it be neat if life were like that? if you could just cover your mistakes with primer and begin again.....(sigh)

i'm not sure exactly why i ever thought having a blog was a good idea. i'm a long time bore and i don't even like "writing"! i think i intended this blog to be a visual record of work i was doing; a presentation of paintings in stages which no longer exist. these are the paintings i create already knowing i'll invariably paint over even the best of them. the will and passion to paint outweighs the $$ for art materials. hasn't it always been this way? but i digress.....when i first began this blog, my cool, young friends admonished me for being neurotic in a public forum. wise counsel,but i'm reminded of Robert Frost's poem " how hard it is to keep from being king when its in you and in the situation", where an old king is sold into slavery but soon finds himself back on the throne. my point...and i do have one...is that neurotic is bound to show up in my writing.i've decided to stop worrying about this and just use this blog as a therapeutic journal. my apologies to the three people who actually read this stuff.

spirit dwelling

trees

some pictures from bear mountain

hawks overhead

new painting

oil painting

i was gifted with someone's leftover oil paints recently....only a few colors. this is the first oil painting i've done in 25 years. it's titled " bird woven in green rug" based on an image in a wallace stevens poem.

round two

recently i listened to an interview with a well known artist who suggested that other artists should post works in progress on their blogsites. since i'm reknown for my propensity for repainting canvases, my works are always on their way to being something else. i don't always know when to stop....so today i'm posting a painting, as it is now and as it morphs into a finished painting.

these are from the White Cat series from the mid 1980's.They are both 30" x 22".

i am such a bust at this blogging business. what kind of minds do people have who are always able to pontificate on any and all subjects? who are these people producing so much art with time and energy left over to tell the world. why is my process so agonizingly slow? bottom line: why am i so boring??? the age old question. rhetorical of course. so, since there's nothing for me to say i'll show some pictures of some early watercolors.

all day i come and go...like those long lost women talking michealangelo while old men rolled their tousers and their dreams were etherized upon tables,white linens starched and stretched across the beds of said women languishing in the proverbial pale shade of white,while we watch like the elders in an altogether other poem.

thank you

thanks,barbara ( roadsidegems.blogspot.com)

showtime

more guests

jocelyn and her sister, lee, me and susan

jocelyn, lee and me

mingling

joe and guests

some paintings

marty and melissa

ruth and john

more guests

guests

betty and me

betty, richie and me

angelo

joe, richard and me arriving at the gallery

da cappo

here are the most recent additions to the show . i've repainted the same canvases so many times now i can't remember what was there to begin with. somehow, tho, i think i always return to the same painting i started out with.

blah fest

my art show opens in a month and i hate everything i've ever painted. (well, recently ).Barb and i dragged a bunch of paintings up to the roof to take photos. sometimes....occassionally...(well, once ) the natural light revealed subtelties even i was surprised by. today's photo op left me feeling exactly the way i had felt about this particular group of paintings....kinda embrassed by them....kinda horrified that these are the pieces i've chosen to represent me in my first (and very possibly, only solo show. )


i have painted my past

out of every picture /now

there is nothing to show

of what belongs to me.



the steamy brew;the thick white tendrils of smoke in the afternoon sun...none of this helps the work. even prayer hasn't seemed to help. maybe i should call this series "how i became agnostic."



i 'm as bland and blah as these paintings.boooooooo

music box

Tonight a "program error" ( whatever that is ) prevented me from saving the latest version of my Music Box print. There are some blatant mistakes in this piece, which now turns out to be the only print ever to be.There are almost 50 of my favorite singers/songwriters/musicians. (how many can YOU find?) These include, in no particular order:1.bob dylan 2.nat king cole 3. johnny cash 4. ula may carlisle 5. jim morrison 6. richie havens 7.rick danko 8.levon helm 9.bobby daren 10. the beatles 11. led zeplin 12.country joe 13. wilson pickett 14. billie holiday 15.tommy dorsey16.fats waller17. b.b.king 18.john coltrane 19. judy collins 20. joni mitchel 21.bob lind 22.robbie robertson 23.arthur lee 24.freddy mercury 25.king crimson 26.van morrison 27.harry chapin 28.richard manual 29.sade 30.peter and gordon 31.peter,paul and mary 32.dan hill 33.johnny echols 34.bob marley 35.loudin wainwright 36.gordon lightfoot 37.mott the hoople 38.steven stills 39.crosby,stills, nash and young 40.janis 41.paul simon 42.tom waits 43.kris kristofferson 44. tom waits. there may be more. there should be more.

“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show.”
Andrew Wyeth

I took these pictures today on a trip to Staten Island. The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge can be seen in the background. I watched the bridge being built from the window of my 7th grade classroom. Even after viewing the years of construction, it always looked to me that someone had just painted a bridge along the horrizon.