$400
Wednesday, December 31, 2025
On Freshly Plowed Snow
$400
Friday, December 26, 2025
Clementine Atop an Edge
$400
Thursday, December 25, 2025
Ornamental Clementine Hanging Out
Hanging Out
painted as a snow life in my yard on December 22, 2025, 10" x 8" (w x h), using Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, all selected for light fastness and permanence, wax resist and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed.
$300
Wednesday, December 24, 2025
Clementine Edged on a Snow Day
on a Snow Day
Atop plowed snow beyond my driveway on December 5, 2025, painted on December 22, 2025 12" x 9" (w x h) using Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, all selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed.
$400
Tuesday, December 23, 2025
Precipice Balanced
$400
Monday, December 22, 2025
Tree Branch Shadows... and Comments
Tree Branch Shadows
Floating on Snow Abstractly
$150
A Viewer's Curious Questions
Virginia Coury's amusing and insightful December 24, 2025 Facebook comments on my art posting of Tree Branch Shadows Floating on Snow Abstractly deserve a thoughtful response...
Re: I really love the simplicity of your paintings. It tickles my funny bone that when I think you couldn't possibly make a subject simpler and more pared down, you dare to take that range down a notch further.
Indeed, I often do series of studies, the first one the most detailed, and keep simplifying. Perhaps most people would look at the series and think the order I painted was simplified to detailed, but it's actually detailed to simplified. Though, for this one, Tree Branch Shadows Floating on Snow Abstractly, it was a one and done.
I note from my online museum searches that the great artists painting throughout the lives tend to simplify their art during their painting journey. I quite like and enjoy this Paul Cezanne, Study of Trees, painted two years before he completed his journey through life, pure simplicity with the road and trees. I saw it in person at Harvard's art museum, oil on canvas, 19" x 25" (w x h), circa 1904:
Study of Trees
Paul Cezanne (1839-1906), French
Oil on canvas, 19" x 25" (w x h), circa 1904
Museum Notes edited:
Museum Notes edited:
Study of Trees, painted two years before he died, exemplifies Cezanne depicting depth on a flat canvas. This had been a focus of his for most of his career. Energetic diagonal brush strokes slice the space of the picture, producing the suggestion of movement in and out of depth, and dashed lines define the tree trunks on either side of a country winding road. The rough, unpainted areas of the canvas seem as animated as the daubs of paint flickering across the picture's surface, like leaves in shifting sunlight. At the time of its making, Study of Trees was at the vanguard of intellectualized, abstract painting.
I also posted a visual essay on Paul Cezanne's simplicity with watercolors that he painted later in life, Paul Cézanne Watercolors with a Light Touch on my website HERE.
Re: People say that we shouldn't scratch further than art itself and just appreciate it for its own sake. However, my first real exposure to art was through reading...
I study art online using most of the major museum's collections which are online. I look at the art and I read about the art. When I paint and note the colors or ideas in the art, I look online at how other artist have approached this. I often post essays of the other's art, like paintings also using orange and blue, or simply paintings also using red roofs on houses.
Re: Do you pare down everything in your surroundings and in life to their most intrinsic elements? I am somehow picturing a monastic existence - free of clutter. My husband would ask me "Why does that matter to you?" I suppose it's for the same reason I had to look up the origin of the word "codger" (an often mildly eccentric and usually elderly fellow).
Amusing comment, does my life reflect the simplicity of my art? My life is certainly organized, though my home full of watercolors lined up everywhere, scattered yet I can usually find anything anywhere. When my desk gets too messy and full of paintings and notes and frames piled up and surrounding my computer, I pare it down to it's simplest form. Thinking about that, perhaps it's the same method I simplify my art, from the complex to the simplest, a form where the mind can think and see clearly.
Monday, December 15, 2025
Portrait of Maddie...
on Boston's MBTA Green Line
on August 20, 2025, painted December 2, 2025, 7" x 5" (w x h), using Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, all selected for light fastness and permanence on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed.NFS
Tuesday, December 9, 2025
Winter Dream Under Summer
Winter Dream Under Summer
painted December 9, 2025, 10" x 8" (w x h), using Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, all selected for light fastness and permanence on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed.NFS
Tuesday, December 2, 2025
Impressionism Making an Impression
Making an Impression
At the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, with Grandson Finn and his Girlfriend Maddie on August 20, 2025 painted December 1, 2025, 7" x 5" (w x h), using Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, all selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed.
NFS
Friday, November 28, 2025
Wild Survivors Black Friday Gobble
Stepping into Black Friday
Gobble Gobble
Wild Turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) on Fort Ridge in Shapleigh, Maine painted November 8, 2025, 7" x 5" (w x h), using Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, all selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed.$150
Thursday, November 27, 2025
Five in My Yard Gobble Gobble
$300
Wednesday, November 26, 2025
Window View Two Too
$150
Tuesday, November 25, 2025
November Sunlight Sunset
NFS
Wednesday, November 19, 2025
Autumn Art Around the World Essay
Autumn in Abstract Art
Around the World Essay
1
Latvia
October Colors
Aina Putnina (1962- ), Latvian
Acrylic on paper, 12" x 9" (w x h),
$185 USD
Source: Women in Louvre, Salon International, Digital, editedLatvia
October Colors
Aina Putnina (1962- ), Latvian
Acrylic on paper, 12" x 9" (w x h),
$185 USD
Aina Putnina, born in 1962 in Balvi, Latvia, studied art and art education at the Latvian Academy of Art (1985-1992) and the Baltic International Academy in Riga (2007-2011). Since 1992 she's been teaching at an art school, while balancing her teaching career with exhibitions, workshops, and artistic projects across Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, the US, and Georgia. The artist's website is HERE.
Armenia
Autumn Day
Tigran Avetyan (1988- ), Armenian
Oil on canvas, 30" x 22" (w x h), 2020
$1,551 USD
Tigran Avetyan (1988- ) was born in the Akori village, Lori, Armenia. In 2005 he graduated from secondary school in this village. From 2005-2012 he studied at the Terlemezyan College of Fine Arts, Yerevan, Armenia. From 2013-2017 he studied at the State Academy of Fine Arts of Armenia, Department of Fine Arts, Yerevan, Armenia. He paints mainly landscapes.
Moldova
Luminous
Mariana Baciu (1977- ), Moldavian
Oil on canvas, 47" x 34" (w x h), 2023
$2,743 USD
Mariana Baciu (1977- ) paints plein air and studio landscapes in Moldova. Her works have been exhibited in both national and international shows, and are part of private collections around the world.
Switzerland
Autumn Poem
Elena Popa (1983- ), Switzerland
Acrylic on canvas, 28" x 28" (w x h), 2022
$723 USD
Elena Popa (1983- ) from 1996-2001 studied at the Academy of Arts in Bucharest, Romania. She worked as a painter as well as in scenography for theater, and also advertising. Since 2019 she's entirely focused on painting. The artist's website is HERE.
Romania
Autumn
Muntean Floare, Romanian
Acrylic on canvas, 32" x 32" (w x h), 2018
$1,885 USD
Muntean Floare was born in Alba Iulia, Romania, where she lives and works. She's a full time Romanian artist.
Canada
Feuillage en Lumiere / Foliage in Light
Richard Riverin (1942- ), Canadian
Acrylic on canvas, 20" x 24" (w x h), 2022
$3,010 USD
Richard Riverin, born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1942, is a self-taught artist, establishing himself as an artist at fifty-seven-years-old.
Vietnam
The Feeling of Autumn
Anh Tuan Le (circa 1978- ), Vietnamese
Acrylic on canvas, 32" x 22" (w x h), 2022
$1,413 USD
Anh Tuan Le (circa 1978- ) was born in and lives in Hue, Viet Nam. After studying and graduating from the Hue University of Fine Art, 1996-2000, he painted realistic paintings, but over time, evolved to abstract expression. His art sells in Vietnam and Thailand. When he's not painting he teaches Visual Fine Arts at Hoa Sen University (HSU) in Ho Chi Minh City and at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology.
United States
Autumn Palette
Vahe Yeremyan (1980- ), American, Armenian born
Oil on canvas, 16" x 15" (w x h), 2023
$670 USD
Vahe Yeremyan (1980- ) born in Armenia, is an American living in California. In 2007 he received his degree as a Doctor of Philosophy in Education, Fine Art Therapy and Psychology, Armenian State University, Yerevan, Armenia. Awards and Honors: Seascape Award of Excellence, OPA National Juried Exhibition, Cutter & Cutter Fine Art Gallery, St. Augustine, FL. Exhibitions: Art San Diego, Convention Center, San Diego, CA 2022 The Other Art Fair, Dallas, TX 2021 The Other art Fair, Los Angeles, CA 2021. The artist's website is HERE.
Light Bright Autumn Trees
$300
Thursday, November 13, 2025
Above My HighBush Blueberry Bush
HighBush Blueberry Bush
$400
Tuesday, November 11, 2025
Model in Vincent van Gogh Yellow Plus More...
While painting in our Friday Group, I was thinking of how Vincent van Gogh painted portrait flesh as yellow, as I'd seen with his portrait face of Augustine Roulin at Boston's MFA, and thought... I 'can Gogh' that way, two. 7" x 5" (w x h), October 30, 2025, 7" x 5" (w x h), using Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, all selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico hot pressed 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed, $150
Lullaby: Madame Augustine Roulin
Rocking a Cradle (La Berceuse)
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Dutch
Oil on canvas, 29" x 36" (w x h), 1889
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Bonus Poses Painted
Rocking a Cradle (La Berceuse)
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Dutch
Oil on canvas, 29" x 36" (w x h), 1889
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Source: Notes from various museums, edited
Vincent van Gogh arrived at the motif of La Berceuse through reading the novel Pecheur d'Islande (Icelandic fisherman) by Pierre Loti, inspiring the feeling of fishermen sleeping in rocking boats. While in Arles, in February of 1889 Van Gogh painted Augustine Roulin, the wife of postal worker Joseph Roulin in bold, exaggerated colors against a vividly patterned floral background. The rope in her hands leads to a cradle beyond the confines of the frame. At right, the painter inscribed the title La Berceuse, which means both "lullaby" and "she who rocks the cradle." The Roulins had a baby at home, but Van Gogh conceived of the action in a broader sense as well, writing to his brother that he would like to see this painting "in the cabin of a boat" where fishermen in "their melancholy isolation, exposed to all the dangers, alone on the sad sea would experience a feeling of being rocked, reminding them of their own lullabies." This painting is one of five variations Van Gogh painted on the same subject. In a May 21, 1889 letter Theo Van Gogh acknowledged his receipt of a group of paintings from Vincent Van Gogh including four portraits of Madame Augustine Roulin, including this painting. Vincent had given one to his model, who had her pick of the five. He began the portraits just before his breakdown in Arles, in December 1888, and completed them in early 1889.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~Bonus Poses Painted
from this painting session
where I went with the truer flesh color
Vincent used used in his hands of Augustine Roulin:
where I went with the truer flesh color
Vincent used used in his hands of Augustine Roulin:
Painted in our Friday Drawing Group, 5" x 7" (w x h), using Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, all selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed, $150
5" x 7" (w x h), rough Painted in our Friday Drawing Group, 5" x 7" (w x h), using Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, all selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed, $150
5" x 7" (w x h), cold pressed Painted in our Friday Drawing Group, 5" x 7" (w x h), using Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, all selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed, $150
5" x 7" (w x h), hot pressed Painted in our Friday Drawing Group, 5" x 7" (w x h), using Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, all selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed, $150
8" x 10" (w x h), using Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, all selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. on Arches cold pressed 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed, $300
Sunday, November 9, 2025
October's Window View
$400
The Art of Orange and Yellow Visual Essay
The Art of Orange and Yellow
Visual Essay
Autumn Trees - The White Birch
Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986), American
Oil on canvas, 30" x 36" (w x h), 1924
Private Collection
Source: VariousPrivate Collection
This was painted at Alfred Steiglitz family's summer home at Lake George, New York in the fall of 1924. A few months later she married Alfred on December 11, 1924. This was the 1920s when Georgia visited York Beach, Maine for more than ten weeks to paint solo, in what was to be the precursor to her move to New Mexico.
Shadows
Susan Tormoen (1936) American
Pastel, circa 2011
Pikes Peak Pastel Society Pastels Plus Exhibit
Susan Tormoen, born in 1936, has a B. A. in philosophy, Lake Forest College, Lake Forest, Illinois. She's a signature member of the Pikes Peak Pastel Society, Colorado Springs, CO. This 2011 pastel was part of the Pikes Peak Pastel Society Pastels Plus Exhibit at the High Vista Fine Art Gallery, El Pueblo History Museum, Pueblo, CO.
Summer Sunlight
Beatrice Whitney Van Ness (1888-1981), American
Oil on canvas, circa 1936
The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC
Beatrice Whitney Van Ness (1888-1981) studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1905. In 1908 she received a scholarship from the Museum School and joined the faculty two years later. Around 1909 she took summer classes with Charles H. Woodbury in Ogunquit, Maine. He went on to become her mentor for many years. In 1915 she married businessman Carl N. Van Ness, and with him summered in Ogunquit and North Haven, Maine. In 1921 she founded the art department of Beaver Country Day School in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, remaining on its faculty until 1949. The Beaver Country Day School founded the Beatrice Van Ness Society in the painter's memory. Her papers are held by the Archives of American Art.
Summer Sunlight (circa 1936), most likely occurred at her island home in Bartlett Harbor in North Haven, Maine. It depicts her older daughter who is in the center wearing a large hat, her nephew Winthrop Stearns who has his back to the viewer and her neighbor, Barbara Allen, who has a yellow banana in her hand. The subject of the painting, however, is the bright sunlight that pervades throughout the painting. Regarding the composition, forms are echoed throughout. A shard of yellow that cuts into the rim of the umbrella is echoed in the shard of cloud that cuts into the same umbrella and is repeated in the barely visible triangular sail. The blue in Allen's bathing suit is repeated in a brighter tone in the triangle of oceanic blue at the upper left corner. The brown umbrella support serves as an anchor to the composition and also isolates the young man from the women's half of the painting. The ascending progression of heads from right to left and the parallel diagonal of the edge of the umbrella are the most pronounced diagonals that give the scene motion.
Lilies Against Yellow House
Alex Katz (1927- ) American
Oil paint on hardboard, 9" x 12", 1983
Tate and National Galleries of Scotland,
Edinburgh, Scotland
Katz has placed colorful lilies against the institutional brickwork of his summer house in Lincolnville. He has been painting flowers since the 1960s, often painted during summer residencies in Maine. The cropped, flattened composition displays a debt to Japanese art. Katz is well known for his large paintings, whose bold simplicity and heightened colors are now seen as precursors to Pop Art. Small oil paintings such as this one are sketched from life and often intended to be scaled up into larger works, but their economic execution and visible brush strokes reveal an intimate side to his practice. He says, "A sketch is very direct. It is working empirically, inside of an idea."
Orange Barn
Wolf Kahn (1927-2020), German born American
Pastel, 2010
Wolf Kahn (1927-2020) worked in oil and pastel. His works usually are landscapes and his own personal vision of nature. His use of light and color has been described as combining "pictorial landscapes and painterly abstraction." In 1956, he met fellow painter Emily Mason and married 1957 in Venice. They lived in New York City. In 1963 they moved to Italy where their second daughter was born. In 1968 they bought a farm in Brattleboro, Vermont, where they continued to summer and work. In 2005 the Smithsonian Art Collectors Program commissioned Kahn to produce a print to benefit the cultural and educational programs of the Smithsonian Associates. The screenprint, entitled Aura, hangs in the Graphic Eloquence exhibit in the S. Dillon Ripley Center on the National Mall.
Untitled (for Vincent)
Alma Thomas (1891-1978), American
Oil on canvas, 1976
Sold at the 2016 Exposition opening, $475,000 USD
ConnerSmith, Washington DC
Alma Woodsey Thomas (1891-1978) was an African-American artist and art teacher who lived and worked in Washington, DC, and is now recognized as a major American painter of the 20th century. She is the first African-American woman to be included in the White House's permanent art collection. Thomas is best known for her "exuberant", colorful, abstract paintings that she created after she retired from a 35-year career teaching art at Washington's Shaw Junior High School. Thomas worked in her home studio, a small living room, creating her paintings by "propping the canvas on her lap and balancing it against the sofa." She worked out of the kitchen in her house, creating works like Watusi (Hard Edge) (1963), a manipulation of the Matisse cutout The Snail, in which Thomas shifted shapes around and changed the colors that Matisse used, and named it after a Chubby Checker song.
Yellow/Orange
Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015), American
Color lithograph, edition of 75, 41" x 35" (w x h), 1970
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Kelly used the G.I. Bill to study from 1946-47 at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where he took advantage of the museum's collections, and then at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. While in Paris, Kelly continued to paint the figure but by May 1949, he made his first abstract paintings. Observing how light dispersed on the surface of water, he painted Seine (1950), made of black and white rectangles arranged by chance. Kelly's discovery in 1952 of Monet's late work infused him with a new freedom of painterly expression. He began working in extremely large formats and explored the concepts of seriality and monochrome paintings. From then on he painted in an exclusively abstract mode.
Schoodic Sunrise
Philip Frey (1967- ), American
Oil on linen, 30" x 24" (w x h), 2024
Philip Frey studied at Columbus College of Art and Design and graduated with a Bachelor's of Fine Arts in Painting from Syracuse University in 1990. He paints Maine's harbors and islands with a bold palette that captures the light and moods of his home state, from the streets of Ellsworth and Portland to Monhegan and Acadia National Park. "I make paintings inspired by the landscape, architecture, interior spaces and the figure... I pay close attention to the ephemeral qualities of light, color and pattern that often go unnoticed. My process involves the use of brushes, palette knives and squeegees to develop a rich paint surface and abstractions that evoke a sense of momentariness and appreciation for "the life of things." He lives in downeast Sullivan, Maine, where he maintains a full-time studio nestled in the woods. His artist's website is HERE.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
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Friday, November 7, 2025
Autumn Shaping Up
Woods at the edge of a field behind my home on Fort Ridge in Shapleigh, Maine with the setting sun behind, painted October 28, 2025, 9" x 12" (w x h), using Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, all selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed.
$400
Thursday, November 6, 2025
Icelandic Watercolor Society Opening
Icelandic Watercolor Society
Annual Show Opening
The annual opening of the seventh annual
Icelandic Watercolor Society /
Félagsmenn í Vatnslitafélagi Íslands
juried show, this year titled, Tilbrigði / Variations,
was Saturday, October 18th, 2025 at 2:00 to 5:00 pm.
featuring sixty-one works by fifty artists.
It's on exhibit until Sunday, November 30th.
2
It's in Reykjavik near the Kjarvalsstaðir Museum
at the gallery wing of the distinctive
two towers church, Háteigskirkja.
2
The gallery wing, Gallerí Göngur.
3
The watercolor at the entrance to the exhibition
is by Öbba - Aðalbjörga Þórðardóttir.
4
My entry is Vestfirðir í þremur litum /
West Fjords in Three Colors.
It was painted using only three
Schmincke Horadam colors,
see more details on my website elsewhere HERE.
5
Derek Mundell, our President
of the Icelandic Watercolor Society /
Félagsmenn í Vatnslitafélagi Íslands
6
It was a well attended opening...
7
...with our art on display.
8
I was pleased to discover my watercolor
featured on the back page of the four page
show's brochure.
Schoodic Trunk Packed for the See
Packed for the See
$150
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