Sunday, December 28, 2014

Trying to make the most of off-time....

 Convergence
6x12; oil on panel
Early Autumn Sunset
6x6; oil on panel

Currently on vacation from both work and school, I'm trying to take advantage of the time off and use it as a springboard to get back into painting regularly. So far, I've been pretty diligent...I'm just hoping I can keep it up once class and work starts back up full-time -- until then, I'm having a lot of fun....

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Feeling my way....

 After Rain
6x6; oil on panel

Filtered Sky
6x6; oil on panel

....a second day back at the easel and some things are getting more familiar; some not so much.

 I went through a very similar experience last summer when I picked up my horn for the first time in four years. I had been writing and recording music, just not playing any on saxophone (which is actually my main instrument). Armed with the crazy notion that I might go back to school, I scheduled an audition for the music department two weeks out......and off I went to the practice room....

What followed was two weeks of the most humbling, frustrating, and painful hours/days in recent memory -- and that includes recovery from emergency abdominal surgery :) My beloved 1959 Selmer saxophone -- my first true love -- felt like a foreign object. As the days progressed, ideas and technique that became more clearly remembered in my mind were simply not in my hands any longer. I would go to play something I heard very distinctly in my head and my fingers could not make the connection -- the muscle memory was gone.....or at least, very much asleep.....more to this story later....

....so here I am again, returning to something that I haven't done for quite some time and feeling like I'm staring at the bottom of a very large mountain -- fortunately, I believe I know the path up a little better this time.

Still, it will be an interesting journey

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

First new painting in almost two years....

Trio 
9x12; oil on cradled panel

This scene is very familiar to me....a stand of poplars that I've returned to many times -- and plan to re-visit many more. It seemed like a fitting way to begin the second chapter of this journey -- a more diverse version of the journey I hope, as I feel more and more each day that I am in a better balanced state of mind with regard to both my musical pursuits and painting. It's been a long road back to both....