Beginning a new painting:



1. Setting out the architecture.

 This week I started work on a new painting in my studio. It will be four feet high by ten feet long and it will be based on an old unused pier in San Francisco. Here are some images from the first days of its development - after I had constructed and primed the two cradled plywood panels:

2. Adding collage elements.

3. Spray paint and text stencils.

The painting probably won't be finished for a while as I am working on several others at the same time. I hope to display them all at my Open Studio in early October. I'll post more images of this one as it develops.

New York Sketchbook

I’ve just returned from a long weekend in New York and boy was it hot! Most of my time was spent sitting and sketching in whatever shady place I could find: trees in Central Park, unused doorways, under an old building which straddled the High Line, and a 14th century cloister from a French monastery.

Here are some of my sketches:

Looking south from Central Park

Clouds gathering over Central Park West



Boating Lake - Central Park



Gansevoort Street NYC

Iced coffee on the High Line

Wall painting from a 12th century
 spanish monastery - Cloisters collection.

The Cloisters NYC

Shadows in Architecture



Bus Depot with Flowers 52" x 38"

 I'm working on some paintings about shadows in architecture. I think this one is finished. It has several layers:
The bus depot outside my studio;
over...
Text copied from a wall in the Meatpacking district of New York;
over...
A vase of flowers on a checkered tablecloth;
over...
Some French posters given to me by a good friend.

It's an unplanned organic process which takes time, relies on accident, and is a lot of fun.