Fields/Grapes

Rather than a journal painting today, here is the first in a series of new paintings I'm working on called "Places/Possessions"-- multi-panel compositions that explore a relationship between still life and landscape.

Orange Juice in Painted Pitcher

This provided some sun on a cold, dark day.

Memory: Roussilon at Sunset

The town of Roussilon in Provence is built next to an old ochre quarry. Seen from a distance at sunset or sunrise, it's a glowing marker in a patterned landscape of orchards and fields.

Geranium in Blue Bottle

I have four big pots of geraniums on a shelf underneath a long sunny studio window. I bring them in from the porch steps in September, and they bloom inside through the winter against a background of our cold white front garden.

Memory: Provence Passage

One of the things I love about walking in an old European city is how theatrical the space can be. Steps lead you up to a new stage, plazas create an intimate set, dark passageways frame spotlit facades. This is a memory from my summer morning wanderings in St. Saturnin-les-Apt.

Chinese Soap

Asian-American culture is one of the few things I've missed since moving to Vermont twelve years ago. More specifically, what I miss is Asian food: Vietnamese noodle shops, and Chinese restaurants with ducks hanging upside down in the window and handmade dumplings boiling in the back. I also miss Korean stores on the corner with bountiful displays of flowers and fruit, and those streets in any Chinatown crowded with stalls selling exotic fish, alien vegetables and those unidentifiable packaged goods that you just want to take home and paint.

Early Snow, Dusk

I can see two mountain ranges from our hill. This is the Worcester Range. Its color changes through the day and through the seasons, but is never green. You could live here for a lifetime and not notice that unless you were trying to paint it.