Paintings With Soul

  Koi, 18"x24" original painting, acrylic on panel, $1000 plus s&h to the first asking nicely.  Link to purchase is below.   Please reach out   with any questions. Did you know that the animals in my paintings come from my dreams? and that I dream of foxes several times a week? This time around I was walking my dogs at The Biltmore Estate. We were mostly alone - nobody else physically present, but I could feel a palpable energy swirling about. If I squinted really hard, I could see faint silhouettes of people in the sky, murmering to each other. Their voices harmonized with birdsong and the fountain. And there was a little fox walking with us - she was dancing about with the three dogs, teaching them how to disapparate with a little head movement and tail flick. Oddly enough I wasn't worried about them running off or disappearing altogether. There was something so pleasant about being there in the gardens, wrapped up in sky. It was a rare and welcome mo...

    From left to right: Koi I, II, III, IV, each 6" square, together measuring 6" x 24", acrylic on museum quality panel, depicting koi fish in a natural pond setting, all four panels together available for $699. Inquiries may come  to me .     I came home from last night's art guild meeting inspired and wanting to paint. Since I had to stay up and wait for a kid to return home, I poured a glass of wine and reached for my brushes. You can see what I worked on long past said kid's return  here  - including the work today.   Around lunch I got to a clear stopping point and decided to work on something entirely different - an idea I have had for quite some time.   So this afternoon was spent fishing.   The four panels are meant to stay together - and yet each of them also works well alone, as you can see in the individual photos below.   Once the originals sell, I'll offer reproductions on these fo...

"One Fish, Two Fish," 12" square, painting of a mixed breed dog and koi, done in acrylics on a museum quality panel, $599 to the first one  asking nicely . SOLD . This is the piece I worked on at Wednesday evening's live paint event at  Merge Gallery . I started and finished within the span of a few hours, all while mingling with the attendees and other artists. I know I may get some flack here. "It ONLY took you a few hours?!" While the execution perhaps seems minimal as far as investment of time, the work and learning leading up that equals 40+ years of study and persistence. No one is born simply knowing how to paint - they spend a lifetime refining an interest or an inclination. It's incredibly hard work, just like trigonometry. Or world economics. Or running a marathon. I break a sweat, too, in the studio - over stuff like color harmony and balanced compositions and turning light into something tangible. ...

"Koi I," from the Cherished series of paintings, 16" x 20", acrylic on museum quality panel, depicting some pretty muscular goldfish. This painting is headed to ArtPrize in Grand Rapids, Michigan in September, and will be available for purchase there. Please  email me  if you are interested in it and I will be happy to make the necessary arrangements.   So, the whole time I'm painting Koi (and it was a conscious decision to break away from my regular subject matter), I'm thinking we choose the sort of water we swim in.    We cannot choose what we swim with (or against), but we can control where inside that school of fish (or sharks!) we choose to be and whether to tread water or move forward or turn around and return to where we started.   So it was these sort of circuitious thoughts that filled my head while I worked away.   And I'd love to paint more koi and goldfish!  Let me know  if you have a pond o...