Birth
Lately these large green apples have smiled up from our lunch tables. Such a perfect fruit and such rich yellow greens prompted this day’s work. One escapee from the womb of the apple inspired the name. Will there be a new tree, new generations of delicious green apples from this tiny seed? With as few strokes as I could manage, my brush salutes the wondrous regeneration of life.
Caught
This young boy of the Philippines was playing with his pigeon, when my camera caught him. He was one of many local children we visited, taught, and invited to our home in Balanga, Bataan. Both he and his little bird were a bit shy, however. He represents the transparency and simplicity of children all around the world. In painting him and his friend, I was interested in creating a strong design of darks and lights, and in capturing a stroke or two of his innocence.
Open to Light
This smoky glass vase posed for me one day, and seemed expressive enough for a portrait. Whenever light and glass coincide, you get the usual painter’s delight. The transparency of glass and its refraction of light, transform the reality seen through it, and create something new. Seeing the change and attempting to paint it are what makes glass believable in still life paintings–always a joyful endeavor.
Intermission
From my earliest years, I have had a great love for the dance form of ballet. The ethereal, fleeting, elegance of the dance with its power to lift beyond the mundane has always captured my imagination. As a child in summer lessons at the art museum, I remember being placed before Degas’ ballerinas with pastels and paper to imitate some iota of his genius and soft rendering of the ballerina. He won my admiration then, for his art and his same fascination with ballet. This ballerina is a sketch for a larger piece, and I was working out design elements of darks and lights. She is awaiting her return to stage.
Tulips
After painting something that takes much concentration, I enjoy working a free and impressionistic image, and usually flowers fit the bill. I cannot imagine anyone not liking tulips. Among the first messengers of spring, they nod their cuplike heads in the breeze, and they are always fun to paint. These are painted on a beveled, oval-shaped canvas, a nice invention for the occasional frameless painting.
