I've been busy. Shifting directions a little bit. Not a lot, I'm returning to a more expressive style. A few years ago after a long absent from painting, a five year stint at Bloomberg News, I started a little quest to paint with a more realistic polish. I think I achieved the goal but find the polish a little dull.

For over a year now I've been painting long, up to 9 hour, life poses at Johan Sellenraad's studio. With Johan and Judith Reeve. Two very different influences. I had found myself being frustrated with my fairly good attempts at realism. Real but not expressive. Too much chasing what I thought I was seeing. I had been 'studying ' Judith's color palettes based on the teaching of Robert Henri. That forced me to expand and starve my palette at the same time. Great fun great results. Gone are the umbers and earth tones here now is color based on light.

At the same time I was building Johan's web page in Squarespace. He had it all organized all I had to do was execute it in a format. It was a revelation. Highly expressive realism in coherent theme. Compositional challenge is the cornerstone. Most of the time copying what you see isn't really challenging. It's the artist job. Johan has done a great job of this for his long artist life.

The Upper Delaware River Painting Society. Earlier this spring several of my painting buddy's formed a Facebook group the promote outdoor painting. Really it was a way to force us into the outdoors because we'd rather stay home and eat doughnuts.

So lot's been happening. Lot's more to come.

A blog for the musing and rants about painting, the business of painting, getting old, passing along good stuff, links, tutorials and tidbits.