Week's End: my workshop completed and clean up and painting dayI

48 x 36 Head of the Hole

I finally finished “The Top of the Hole” I wanted to add some depth to the water at the top of the hole.

48 x 36 The Gloaming

I want to still add some yellower orange to the foreground and think about adding a reference to fence post tops on the right side of the blue fence line

One True Corner, 36 x 54 I feel the foreground entrance to the painting is working a just needs the structure of fence post tops poking up on the right side of the entrance grasses. The subject tree on the left of the barn is very close, finishing touches at I am done with this. I feel the white fence should be continued on the right of the barn and a bit more suggestion in the back ground.

workshop Tuesday: Trees

The Structual support for many landscape paintings.

this was a warm up for todays workshop. A new layer clarifing rocks and cascade.

I wanted to reflect a bit of the sky red/orange into the rocks.

I also started to integrate the hedge line, raise the field to the correct height, and a new layer on the tree to the right of the barn.

Monday the 13th

Today I was oscillating between chaos and explanation. I laid the subtext for the tree and fence on the left side, started integrating the major shrub line with the foreground, and placed the tree and shadow shapes to the right of the barn. The dark verticals there create a bracket that keeps the eye from sliding out of the frame.

The blue roof creates just enough surprise against all that warm ochre, and the orange hillside has real weight and authority. The push-pull between the loose foreground and the more structured middle ground is alive — not a problem yet.

I still have to raise the right side mustard field to the base of the barn — it's floating slightly off its platform right now. Maybe Wednesday. The foreground marks will eventually need a unifying temperature decision, but that can wait. The painting has real atmosphere. That hillside is going to be something.

Today was structural. I wanted to give the stream a believable fall — a dominant flow with secondary sections branching off it — and add another layer of built color to the top of the waterfall.

The white water is finding its logic now, cascading in a convincing sequence from upper left down through the rocks. The dark masses are doing their job, giving the falls something to push against. Those flashes of teal tucked between the boulders are quiet but effective — they keep the water feeling transparent and alive rather than just painted white.

The fiery canopy above is already the emotional engine of the piece. As the water structure tightens below, that tension between the warm riot up top and the cool, deliberate fall of water is going to be what makes this painting sing.

Friday 4/10/2026

I wanted to revisit Cascade and attain more of the energy of the falling water, its noise and chaos. Less description and more emotion. Explanation is the enemy of Feeling.

Wednesday’s second layer (end of the day so I stopped here)

This is Yesterday’s work more personal than Cascade…I already want to start an even more intimate piece on a larger scale 54 × 45 is next

Cascade 48 x 36 inches

Cascade — and What Comes Next

Cascade, 48 × 36 inches, is finished. Enclosed, intimate, the rocks holding the water like a channel carved over centuries. Intimate without being quiet.

But finishing a painting starts a question. Here: what does the water want to say that I haven't let it say?

Chaos. Noise. Force.

The next one pushes harder — hotter palette, darker rocks, the surrounding world compressed so the water has somewhere to explode into. And before that one is even resolved, I already feel the pull toward another. More compression. More silence in the stones so the release can be louder.

This is how a series starts. Not with a plan. With an appetite the last painting created.

Untitled 36 x 54 inches

The foreground pulls hard. The mountain holds firm. And between them, the subject — barn, fence line, a ghost of a village in cool lavender — dissolves back into the land it came from.

Same value. Same temperature. A geometry that feels almost too deliberate to be natural.

The painting asks you to finish the sentence. What you find there is yours.

48 x 36 (The Eye Wants to Travel) working title

This painting tries to deny it — holding the farmhouse cool and quiet so the eye keeps moving toward that hill. Cadmium Orange Pure, glazed with Alizarin Crimson. It doesn't reflect light. It holds it.

The next one I'll push harder.

So this is all yesterdays work, Not every day is this productive. I will get in again tomorrow and while these peices continue to dry and take the time to come up with a few slight alterations to the last painting (I think I will try a bluer roof to the house and the base of the trees to see if that sets the orange hill even stronger.

The turn of the river 36 x 54 inches

Work in Progress

The road's perspective needs to commit. The trunks need to own the ground before they earn their branches. And the willows at the water's edge need to stop decorating and start directing.

The bones are there. Now it's about discipline.

33 x 66 inches

One Corner

The more I sit with this one, the clearer it becomes.

One corner of that structure — white against the golden hill, light catching the edge — that's the painting. Everything else exists to deliver you there and hold you when you arrive.

Sometimes the solution is surrender.