Omnia Mutantur, nil interit

Thinking about Manet all this week, with the scent of peonies, brought to me by one of my oldest friends.
The brief peony was the full bloom of a rose to Manet. "And rose she lived the time of a rose, the space of one morning". I think of Manet's Last Flowers, roughly 20 paintings in all. The last one completed barely two months before his death. He said that an artist can say everything he has to say with "flowers, fruit, and clouds." I am sitting here painting these flowers, of which this blossom whose days of beauty are numbered, as it is with my own life.
sold

These paintings are 40:13 & 14 and are $40 each to the first response.

Small Town (Both Sold)

Every day I go to see Sue. She has a little chocolate shop.
I see her from the window, dipping fruits and truffles.
Right before the downpour, I asked her to dip a strawberry
for me to paint. Some days are so simple and lovely.

This is 40:11 &12
"40: Painting My Way Through The Year"

These are $40 each to the first person.

40:12 (bite, sold)

Yet June

(sold)

Oil on cradled maple panel
3" x 5", $65

Not Even Yet June (sold)

I have a quiet discourse. It starts always with "when is my life going to begin?". Just as this conversation began in my head I picked up this flattened butterfly. "Not even yet June."
And then I thought again of David Foster Wallace and I repeated....
"This is water, this is water"

This is then , 40:10 and as part of "40: Painting My Way Through the Year" project, it is $40 to the first response.

Shard From Palatine Hill

I wanted something of Augustus. Walking Palatine Hill my eyes were going everywhere, I wanted to find something. I knew it was possible. The dirt used for the path was reused from the excavations. "look for unusual shapes" and there it was. This shard, this fragment. I slipped into my pocket. I laughed to myself, knowing it was Delft or certainly 19th century. No matter, it shared a time in that area and resurfaced to be reclaimed by me.
Rome has its origins on the Palatine. Indeed, recent excavations show that people have lived there since approximately 1000 BC.

This painting is 40:9 and is $40 to the first response.

View from Christopher Street Pier, Hudson River waterfront, New York City
It is summer when I can feel the grass under me at this west side pier. From here I can see the Statue of Liberty. The heat and the haze in the distance. I never considered painting such recognizable places until I started really looking. After hours of observation, one can begin to see the green patina that glimmers in just the right light in late afternoon. The limp flag on a day when the air is heavy. I come here again and again, each sitting a challenge to get my mind to just see the light.

If you are interested in this series, the paintings are around 4" x 4", oil on maple, $150 each

Fly Fishing In My Mind....


























I have been holding onto this Fly Fishing kit, that appears to be from the Turn of the Century. Today,I felt like I could see. So I started painting these lures, from New York and Scotland. Modern fly fishing is normally said to have originated on the fast, rocky rivers of Scotland and Northern England. A place that my ancestors came from.

Many credit the first recorded use of an artificial fly to the Roman Claudius Aelianus near the end of the 2nd century. He described the practice of Macedonian anglers on the Astraeus River:

...they have planned a snare for the fish, and get the better of them by their fisherman's craft. . . . They fasten red . . . wool round a hook, and fit on to the wool two feathers which grow under a cock's wattles, and which in colour are like wax. Their rod is six feet long, and their line is the same length. Then they throw their snare, and the fish, attracted and maddened by the colour, comes straight at it, thinking from the pretty sight to gain a dainty mouthful; when, however, it opens its jaws, it is caught by the hook, and enjoys a bitter repast, a captive.

This is 40:4 -40:8, each painting is $40 to the first response.
40:8 (bottom right, sold)