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.