In the fall of 2025, my wife and I traveled to England, with a week in Mayfair London, and a week in the Cotswolds. Renting a cottage in the village of Broadway, which was an ideal English countryside location. A small village, with three legendary Inns, a beautiful old hotel, and plenty of shops, galleries, and pubs. We could have stayed there forever. With daily walks to town through the fields filled with sheep and horses. Wonderful.
Big paintings are not meant to be viewed on a little device. They are so much more energizing in person!
Here is another big beautiful painting of the Iowa Landscape. These days, we often get more than one 5-7 inch rains in the spring. The results can be very challenging for everyone.
The third installment of the Flooded Field after a heavy spring rain. In person, one can really see and sense the high humidity about the Iowa field-scape.
This is a smaller version of the last painting. They both worked out marvelously. The sky and the water both have the full spectrum of color in them.
This is the seventh painting in the stratified series.
This was fun. What do you think?
“Most every night
The confetti falls at dusk
Like a Jubilee”
I’ve been concentrating on skies. In this series, I intend to pull them apart.
The 7th in the Bird on a wire series. The sky being the star again.
The preponderance of the great and sacred in the company of the ordinary and profane. That’s what this series is arguing.
Third in the striated series on paper.
24×24
New addition to the ethereal Iowa Harvest Landscape Series.
My 12th painting from the gulf coast area. I’ll soon have representation in the area. Stay tuned!
My painting practice involves attempting to create a rich and prismatic sky of pastels, from horizon to zenith, as often seen in the magical hours of the day both in the morning and at evening time. This, with a knife.
My practice is currently focused on the Ibis, the Seagrape, and the waters edge of the Gulf of Mexico.
I’ve been going to Sanibel, Florida for over twenty years in the spring, vacationing from Iowa. Though as a young man, I romanticized the west and always thought I’d paint there forever. These days find me dreaming of the gulf coast. I’d like to start wintering down there. So here is my first gulf coast painting. Hopefully, I’ll get into a gallery down there, and that will certainly go a long way in justifying the idea of being there for extended periods of time during the season. Stay tuned!
There is plenty of subject matter in the small towns of Iowa to build a series of paintings reflecting small town charm. this one is turning out pretty well. What do you think?
This piece I deemed finished earlier this year, then decided it needed more foreground. I think the snowy trees turned out pretty well.
I did a larger version of the last painting. This one is stunning in person. Though un-stretched at present, it is obviously intended for the Colorado markets.
This was the year I returned to Steamboat Springs, Colorado and started a series of alpine paintings destined to the Rocky Mountain gallery market. Inquires to my contact page.
I remain hopeful that I have a major announcement in the days to come!
I usually stay on a subject for a series of takes and sketches. I’ve reached the finish line on this one.
Latest works. Colors are just starting to change.
Because I constructed this large painting straight from the imagination, you can count me out as a realist. From the imagination counts as romanticism, and if it’s considered not ugly, it then falls within Romantic Positivism.
It’s a work in progress, as I see a few things, a few values worth fixing. Maybe some telephone poles. This painting is rather big at 4 feet by 5 feet and, I am getting very comfortable with the larger paintings. Stay tuned!
The early morning bus ride is often in the magical time of day for most kids who live out in the country.
I kind of like how this little series is developing. Time to try it on a larger scale. Be back soon!
This is a larger version of my last painting. It was an hour later, so the pedestrians have changed!
I consider 10th and Locust, in downtown Des Moines, my neighborhood as it is three blocks from my studio. There is a rather decent Italian restaurant in the building you are looking at, along with the Temple Theater venue for live events. Across the street to the west is a Starbucks, also very convenient for coffee and meetings.
The latest in the Iowa Sheep series which has found a home in a private collection.
The rural Iowa land scape continues to inspire this painter to reap the beautiful and true from the simplicity of eternal forms that surround us.
2021 has come to a close with this last plein air study. Here I now stand, after following the rules of classical form for five years of painting, at the precipice of knowing that what lies ahead is toward the abstract. In order to avoid painting another ho-hum landscape, albeit ones with sound harmony and sensibilities, I’ve realized, from recent in-depth studies of the principles of Cezanne, that true art comes from the corruption and violation of nature. One is otherwise making a replica or a copy of her. The picture is the thing. It is its own thing. A two dimensional thing that must be created in its own right. I’m setting out. Wish me luck.
I lived in California for five years in the early 90’s. As a school age kid, I was a California dreamer. Volkswagen beetles and flower power seemed very alluring to me. The entire west did. I eventually discovered it all and, the west and its beauty became my inspiration to paint. The Golden Gate Bridge represented the entire promise of what the west had to offer. Today, it is a vastly different cultural and political climate but, the beauty remains. This painting will most assuredly find a home.
This is the result of a two-hour plein air excursion in Des Moines. Though it is not finished, I am hesitant to paint on it again to guard against altering its freshness.
I have just a few adjustments to make, and then I’ll sign this one. Edit: you are now looking at the updated and final version. Thx!
I’ve been driving around the surrounding farmlands this summer and fall, taking photos of future paintings. I just got around to facing, and finishing this one, after starting it a month ago, and being intimidated by the light in it.
It’s rewarding to knock off a small painting of, say, 12×16 but, I’d like to increase my production of larger paintings such as this one. This is still a work in progress and I’ll only fix a few small details.
Farm life subject matter is something not to be overlooked in Iowa. In fact, it’s a challenge not to consider when looking for striking compositions here in the prairie.
