dan's painting's ... a woodworker does color

ok ... i've been fooling around with this stuff

now for a couple years and i am ready to let it out of the bag ...

i like color!  

woodworking, there's not so much.  you've got

your different woods, your lights and your darks, your curlies

and your burls and other oddities, but the tones are earthy, and after a while,

they sort of blend and you find yourself fussing with subtle variations of brown

over and over and over.  red brown, green brown, light brown, dark brown ...

where are the cadmium reds and oranges, the cerulean blues?

you can't find them in the wood pile ...

so, off to the right there is a new page with a link to a slideshow

of my paintings, only some of which are shown here.  you can see all of them

at this link  i've got a million of em ...

trust me, this is just the beginning.  i am inspired not only

by my friend horst , a multidisciplined creator if ever there was one, but also by reading recently

on the mid century americans, motherwell, johns, diebenkorn, krasner, frankenthaler, o'keefe ...

you get the idea ... 

i plan to add to this post, which will also be accessible from the 'dan's paintings' page 

once it leaves 'home'

enjoy, comment, criticize ... i am open to your thoughts ..

ps .. it looks like you may have to sign into your google account to view the slideshow
ever since they ditched picasa, i have been having trouble sharing new slide shows
my sincere apologies ... 

painting class

please bear with me a bit here as i digress from my normal writings on woodworking.  there is so much more to life, and with the recent death of two close friends, the fact that time is finite and slipping by daily is on my mind ... for the moment, for what remains of summer at least, i am trying a new regimen:  into the shop by 9:00, out by 4:00, with an hour for lunch, (and sometimes, a nap).  more time with friends and family and other interests ... 

we'll see how long that lasts.  the checkbook is still, and always will be, in charge ...

click the photos to enlarge them ... 

so here is horst, my painting instructor, a few years back, with his painting, 'calligraphy'.  actually the image says 2006.  i've known horst well since the early 70's.  he's an 'old' master now, at 91, and is still painting away in nearby arlington.  i went for a visit a few weeks back, asked for some 'lessons' and now we're at it more or less weekly.  today was my third 'lesson'.  so far, his advice has been mostly 'try that bigger brush'. 'try that palette knife' .... 'use that whisk broom some' ... 'stop!' ... stuff like that.  it's a challenge ... the top photo is the results of today's lesson, and one of those paintings was a 'duet' where we passed the brush back and forth a bit without saying much ... at first i was a bit, hmmm, miffed? he was painting over my stuff !!!  in the end, when i got home, kit and i agreed it was the strongest of the bunch.  see if you can figure out which painting that was, and i'll post it at the end.
the other two 'classes' are below ..

8/5

8/11 .. 'paint something representational' was the task ... in this case he cropped off more than half of what i painted after i 'finished' .. much improved, it was, by the chopping ...

next week, i get to use white with the black ... with the black for now, i think i'm channeling robert motherwell, learning about 'volume', 'form', 'power' .. etc.  working my way up to color.  no rush .

 you can read more about horst in this blog post, 'the artist in his studio', from 2010 ...

 to get a good sense of horst's style you can see more of his paintings on my website.

a few of my clients have bought paintings, and you can too!

as promised, this image is 'the duet' ... power, form, space ..

on another subject, i took some new pottery out of the kiln monday ...

 go out and play!

pottery close up ...
update 10 17

9/10/15

9/17/15

9/24/15

10/9/15

1016/15

this week i told horst i wanted tot do something maybe 'a little more representational'.  i didn't get far with that but ... i can try that at home.  i like this guy's style, which should work well with my drawings
but for now with horst i'm enjoying learning how to handle color with a palette knife.  here's one he painted in 2014 .. we bought that from him at christmas and that's how the painting class thing started.

about 30" x 40"  sort of a hans hoffman guy

stay tuned