Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.

-C.S. Lewis

"If I know only one thing, it's that everything that I see
Of the world outside is so inconceivable often I barely can speak"

-Fleet Foxes, "Helplessness Blues"

I haven't posted anything in a while as I've been a little busy working on a couple of studio paintings. I've been wanting for a long time to start working larger, but I haven't known how to connect that to the smaller paintings I've been doing in the field lately.  Ultimately I decided to give the obsessive-neurotic-worry-about-the-direction-of-my-art a rest, and just paint.  So these are my recent attempts at a slightly grander scale, they are 23x40 and 26x32; nothing massive but definitely larger than I'm used to.  I don't think I'm completely done with them yet, but I think I need to let them rest for a while to gain some objectivity and start on something else.

"Push it.  Examine all things intensely and relentlessly.  Probe and search each object in a piece of art; do not leave it, do not course over it, as if it were understood, but instead follow it down until you see it in the mystery of its own specificity and strength."

-Annie Dillard


It's been a really long time since I've posted any drawings, which is ironic given the title of my blog.  I was flipping through an old sketchbook the other day and came across this one.    It's a self portrait I did in ball-point, probably about four years ago.  It's kind of weird looking back.  You see mistakes so much more clearly, but you also see things you like that you didn't appreciate at the time.

"Be careful that you do not write or paint anything that is not your own, that you don't know in your own soul." 

-Emily Carr

 

  

"There is no difficulty in painting detail, the real difficulty lies in getting the general truth of tone and tint." 

- John Collier

These are a few paintings from this week.  I returned to the same spot three days in a row and painted three different compositions.  I was trying to focus more on color, and found plenty of it in the sage and sumac of the local hills.  The paintings  are 10x14 and 10x12 oil on panel.

"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."

-Albert Camus


It's been absolutely beautiful this week, and being outside painting in the evenings has been great.  I also had the chance on Saturday to visit the studio of local landscape painter Eric Merrell, who was very gracious in sharing his time and the insights he's gained as an artist.  You can see his work on his website ericmerrell.com.

"It's strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words."

-T.S. Elliot

"Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist." 

- Edward Hopper

Here are a couple of paintings from this week.  8x10 and 10x14 oil on panel.

"If one really loves nature, one can find beauty everywhere." 

- Vincent van Gogh


Here are a couple paintings from the last week or so.  I've been spending some time painting along the river just below Los Feliz.  Such a cool area, with lots of stuff to paint.

Well I looked into the sky for my anthem 
And the words and the music came through 
But words and music can never touch the beauty that I've seen 
Looking into you -- and that's true

-Jackson Browne