Monday, August 14, 2017

A Day in the Life...

This is my day today. It represents a typical day of my residency.

Early morning, leave home with a roller bag full of plein air painting supplies.

Walk awhile, looking for a good place to paint and taking pictures of different scenes for future reference.

Settle on a good spot, set up my selling-stand and easel. Paint a cityscape and sell paintings.

Finish a cityscape (or two), photograph it, pack up, and head home to clean up, restock, and pack up for the next day's painting adventure.
And, that's my morning.

Afternoon...
Walk half a dozen blocks to the Con Artist Collective. 

Hang out in the basement where all the messy people work. (There's a gallery and a clean work space upstairs.)

Today, I de-molded the first cast of the planter and then brainstormed the next project. Other days I spend modeling, mold-making, or casting.

When I'm done for the day, I go upstairs to the clean workspace and do stuff on the computer, for instance, posting on my blog. 

Evenings, I go home and take care of my sunflower, the mascot of my residency. He was planted when I first arrived on July 15th. Now he is this big:



Monday, August 7, 2017

Garden Sculptures

Friday, I painted a camel at a playground. It was a large camel sculpture, the kind kids can climb on. A young lady, maybe 12 or 13 years old stopped to watch and talked to me: "What are you doing? I like to paint. That's really good! Can I take a picture?" Then she followed me on Instagram. As much as she may have simply been interested in the fact of someone painting, I have to think it must have also been the camel. There was something compelling about the camel.
Last week, I painted a view of the Elizabeth Street Gardens. There were some sculptures, a variety of architectural elements, and several planters. A garden is beautiful in itself. What does it add to people it with man-made objects? The attraction of the Elizabeth street gardens lies in large part in profusion of these objects. I don't know, but I am investigating the question by making something to go in a garden. It is a simple object, commonly found in gardens. It relates to plants and will incorporate some of the patterns that have emerged in my cityscape paintings. Here is the beginning of that object as well as a few of my cityscapes from last week.

Camel, Sarah Roosevelt Park, 5"x7" Watercolor

Entrance to Think Coffee, Bowery & Bleecker, 5"x7" Watercolor

 65 - 2nd Ave, 5"x7" Watercolor

Also, my mascot, Sunflower is growing slowly and just fine: