Category: Studio Notes

  • Studio Notes: Moku hanga progress!

    Studio Notes: Moku hanga progress!

    Last spring I mentioned that I was rekindling a relief printmaking practice — specifically, Japanese woodblock (“Moku hanga“), and I have indeed been spending a lot of time on this over the past year or so. Printmaking is very process-oriented, and it can take a long time (at least for me) to get finished results.…

  • Common Grave: A Painting Project – continued

    Common Grave: A Painting Project – continued

    Part II: The Composition and the Process As I mentioned in my previous post, a ‘cult of devotion’ developed around the skulls and bones found in the Fontanelle cemetery. It is very much a religious, or at least ‘cultic’ site. And why not? Why shouldn’t all these remains, representing the lives of real human beings,…

  • Common Grave: A Painting Project

    Common Grave: A Painting Project

    Part I: How it all started In January 2013, I had the good fortune of visiting the Fontanelle Cemetery – “Il cimitero delle Fontanelle (in napoletano, ‘e Funtanelle)” in Naples, Italy. This fantastic cemetery — really an ossuary — a repository of tens of thousands of human remains, is one of the more unique and…

  • Pinhole research – December chill

    I’ve recently started up again with some explorations in digital pinhole photography.  How this works is: you take a digital SLR, take off the lens and replace it with a modified body cap that serves as the ‘pinhole.’  (I don’t recall where I purchased the pinhole cap, but if you Google ‘digital pinhole – Nikon‘…

  • A new year well underway, Lifeworlds continues

    Hello everyone from frigid New York City on this Valentine’s Day 2016! I’ve been retooling my studio set-up and finally (last weekend) completed the first* second oil painting of 2016 (and the next in the Lifeworld series).  So here we have it: Lifeworld 36 continues the adventure. I’ve also been exploring the ever important topic of…

  • The Lifeworlds Project

    The Lifeworlds Project

    Lifeworlds is a long-range painting project I started in 2012.  The project started initially out of a desire to explore the square format in painting. The inspiration for this was not Instagram as one might easily suppose, but the square format Landscape paintings of Gustav Klimt.  I then chanced upon the evocative term “Lifeworld” in…

  • Today’s image: new work in Project 365

    Read more about the project here.

  • Project: 365

    Project: 365

    Back in October, I started a new, year-long project to document my ongoing practice of visual exploration.  I think of this exploration as central to the work of the artist.  I’m calling the project simply “365” and the end result (to the extent that a project like this ever ends) will be 365 small watercolors presented at this…

  • One last look back at winter …

    One last look back at winter …

    Winter is decidedly on its way out in these parts, but I couldn’t resist giving it one last parting glance this afternoon as I reviewed some photos I shot near Ivoryton, Connecticut in late February. I’ve been a photographer from an early age, at least since my grandmother passed along to me my grandfather’s old…

  • Studio Notes – paysage planétaire completed

    Studio Notes – paysage planétaire completed

    This is the final installment of my series of posts following the progression of a painting I started at the beginning of January – a “paysage planétaire” inspired in part by the work of Ferdinand Hodler and other painters from that era.  So, in my last post, described the overpainting.  Earlier this week, I put…

  • Studio notes – paysage planétaire, continued

    I’m getting a bit behind in my blogging. The month is fast rolling to its completion, I’ve got what feels like a hundred pots in the fire. Among those, the “paysage planétaire” I started several weeks ago continues to evolve. Last week, the underpainting was complete and I worked on the blue areas – sky…

  • Studio Notes – the paysage in progress, continued

    As noted last week, I’m blogging the progress on a new landscape (a “paysage planétaire” in the spirit of Ferdinand Hodler).  On Sunday, I completed the underpainting: Tonight, I had very little time to get into it, so I just worked on the sky and water – the blue areas, mainly. So far, so good!…