This painting is full of symbolism. I am continuing to bring heaven and earth together in the background because the painting transcends both places for these horses to be together. I am also connecting the horses physically at the hearts to symbolize the eternal connection of heart and soul. Go to my fan page if you want to see a close up of today's work. 

This is the start of a four foot commission I am painting for a great lady in Colorado. It is so fun to be painting big again. This will be a great time!

Made it to Wanchese, NC for a great painting session before the deep freeze moved in. This is an oyster trawler named Vanessa ll.

This was a freezing day!! We drove up north, and I was unprepared for the cold weather. I was able to borrow my friends jacket, and of course promptly got titanium white on it! Oh well. The cold didn't keep people out, they were coming in droves. We had to have seen 200 people that day! I am glad mother nature is still popular!

My journeys out in the fields have been amazing, and they are surely not ending anytime soon. Plein Air painting is all about the laws of the land, combined with abstract design elements. There is a life time of learning there. I know that my experiences in Plein Air have had a positive effect in my studio. I can express myself better thanks to this genre of painting. I am really looking forward to this new equine series, for I can finally put voices to all of these horses galloping through my mind. Below, you will find a few sequential photos of a larger painting I started this morning.  This will be the first painting of the new series!

This is just the classic mountain scene. There were no antics from passer byers here. The clouds were building and normal people didn't want to get out of their car and stand in the cold for 2 hours. That's pretty much how it went. It was cold, and as usual I was prepared with paint, but unprepared with clothing. I think I burned over 1000 calories not only because of the cold, but the thinking power this one took. Huge clouds were rolling down the valley ; so nothing was constant. Well, actually, there was something constant, and that was the changing sun patterns throughout the scene. I was glad to make some sense of it and get back in the car! Thanks for viewing my art!

While I was furiously painting this piece as to catch the fleeting light, an old man and his grandson pulled up beside me in a golf cart.  I turned mid-stroke to give them a smile, and the old man(and I mean OLD), said rather grumpily, "Are you painting that mountain?"  "Well, yes sir, I am giving it my very best try." I replied.   He went on to tell me (w/out even a whimper of a smile), in the most intense sort of voice, that his great grandfather had settled this valley in 1864.  In 1905 the government decided they were going to turn it into a National Forest.  They needed to name all of the surrounding mountains.  Their first inclination was to name this one "Mount Baldy".  However, there were already to many Mount Baldy's in Colorado.  So, they decided to name it after the first settler in the valley.  That was this man's great grandpa.  Toten Mountain.  Happily, the whole family still lives and prospers there.