Spring #10 April Hudson River

oil on canvas

54" x 42"
PRIVATE COLLECTION

I'm a little freaked out to tell you the truth.  I'm a little worried now that I've seen Art Weekly on a couple different monitors that some of you are seeing these overexposed.  The tablet laptop I started this on had a screen that could tilt, thus altering the brightness of the image with its angle.  Now I'm on an HP monitor for a Mac Mini and it doesn't tilt.  I cringe when I see the pictures on the blog so bright, but I don't want to change things now because you all have different computers out there and I think I just have to deal.  Alright, let's move on.

Spring #10 April Hudson River  is done from a colored pencil sketch I did on an Amtrak train from Rochester to Penn Station NYC.  The day was hazy and the colors in between the color-suck of winter and the fireworks of spring.  I think I made my own fireworks with the vibrancy of the tree line and the blue circles of water (can't quite call them droplets) coming at the viewer.  The painting makes use of linear and atmospheric perspective.  Dark gray/black dots seem connected like beads on a string or buoys.  The water had that range of silver, dark and light blues that went to purple, and white sparkles.  The hazy dots at the top gently fall down, shimmering, obscuring the hilltop.  You know, I don't think the Hudson River was quite this active, maybe it's me.

For more information on the Hudson River Valley, check out:

http://www.scenichudson.org

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_River

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/hurs/hd_hurs.htm

Aerial View in Google Maps

Spring #4 (View of Central Park from the 21st Floor)

oil on canvas

36" x 42"

The artists Sigmar Polke and Roy Lichtenstein used Benday dots in their paintings as employed by printers (Lichtenstein modeled his work specifically after comics). I'm not so interested in the regularity of that method as I like the quirkiness of my hand as well as the option to change scale. The location of the dots is important to the space in the work. Think Cezanne, Giacometti, and Mondrian mapping space. Their playfulness as compared to a mechanized look make them more Polka than Benday and also differ from the seriousness of the aforementioned artists. I also do not want to limit myself to very saturated colors (spaced differently to appear like more of a range) as is often the case with the Benday dots, preferring to mix more, which works better with the larger dots. Mondrian, while not a dot painter, reduced his palette to the primaries. He found the problem of working with red, yellow, blue, as well as black and white very complex, changing the size and placement of rectangles and squares in order to create a vision resulting from this interplay.

In Spring #4 dots expand on a white ground, showing the bursting energy of the city and the green treetops of Central Park.