Stratham, NH Park Art & Crafts Fair

this Saturday I will be at the Stratham Park and Fairgrounds with my booth and about 20 paintings and a goodly number of giclee prints. Rockingham Craftsmen are sponsoring the event and I'm the token impressionist painter.

A Little Whimsey

I was in a whimsical mood and decided to play around with my oil pastels. The fungi on the tree trunk is from a friend's reference photo. The pixies were just for fun.

New Oil Pastel

Still experimenting with oil pastels.

I just completed this one today.

Prescott Park, Plein Air

Went plein air painting to the fountains in Prescott Park in Portsmouth, NH a couple of weekends ago. I was painting happily for about 40 minutes when a birthday party took over the area around the fountains. They weren't entitled to the exclusive use of the area but there were about a hundred people in the party, at least there seemed to be a hundred people.

I struggled on for a few minutes before the choas just drove me away. I had tried to rough in the scene before leaving. Now a few weeks later, I finished up the painting relying on my fragile memory. The painting is an 8 by 10 inch acrylic, on stretched canvas.

Nubble Light, limited palette

The first photo shows my Yarka, French style easel. It has aluminium legs and is lighter than the typical French easel. It's great for plein air painting. I put oven glass in the easel as a mixing surface. Even dried acrylics are easily removed by wetting the glass. The folded paper towel, at the forward edge of the palette, is wetted, excess water squeezed out, and the acrylic paint globs stay fresher longer on the wet paper.

I had a request to do a painting of the Nubble Lighthouse in Maine for my next art show. It was an opportunity to experiment with a limited palette. I used permanent red, yellow ochre, prussian blue and titanium white. It is fun to see what I can do with a limited palette. My normal palette is only five colors: cad yellow, cad red, ultramarine blue, burnt sienna and rarely permanent green (to gray things down). One of these days I'll try the Zorn Palette of black, yellow ochre and red. White is always understood, officially it's not a color. I have seen some amazing art even with this surprising palette.

This painting is also in the art auction at the Fuller Gardens.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

The Art, Garden Party at the Fuller Gardens has been postponed to Thursday evening, July 9th, in the hopes of catching a break from this incessant rain. It is an out door art auction and garden party. I have three paintings up for auction and will be showing a couple more during my demo.

One of the paintings is an expressionistic depiction of the Nouveau Well in the Fuller, rose garden:

Fuller Gardens

Wednesday, July 8th I will be doing a demo painting and showing some of my art work at the historic Fuller Gardens, North Hampton, New Hampshire. There also will be an art auction from 5 PM to 8PM that day.

Oil Pastel of the art nouveau well in the center of the rose garden at the Fuller Gardens.

The painting is 11 by 14 inches.