Ohio Farm Revisited

Ohio Farm Revisited
Oil on canvas, 12x24, $300

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My very first painting trip, in 2009, took me to Wisdom, Montana, the second-most beautiful place on Earth (the Eastern Shore earns the top spot). On the way out and back, I stopped in Ohio to paint. 

I was captivated by the land and the light near Sandusky, is in northwestern Ohio, on the shore of Lake Erie. There was a golden quality to that light, a warmth that seemed somehow contrary to what seemed like a thinness to the air. That shiny, golden light brightened the fields and the wide, flat plains of Ohio. It lighted the barns and the neat, orderly homes. The sunsets burnished and blazed on the fields of hay and wheat and alfalfa, which went on in rows forever.   

The quality of that light - brand-new to me - is  something I've come to know, here on the Eastern Shore. Its thinness comes from clarity and cleanness of the air. Its round, golden brightness comes in part from the extra bounce of light off the water. Here's it's the Atlantic, on one side, and the Chesapeake Bay on the other. There, it was Lake Erie. 

I made and sold a lot of paintings from that trip, but a few are still with me. This is one of them - or it was. Even then, I was experimenting with leaving parts of the canvas blank, and leaving pieces of the painting more or less unfinished, the structure and the drawing visible. 

And while I like that effect (the original painting is the smaller one, just above), I think that this painting is better finished, with the canvas filled up. What do you think? 

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MY BROTHER RECENTLY directed me to the blog written by friends of his, David and Kim Stringer. Click here to reach their Memory Stringer blog, which is filled with wonderful, amazing photos; David has his own blog of humor, which you can reach by clicking here.

I have a terrible memory, and so I like to get blogs delivered to my inbox. If I don't, I forget that they exist. It's awful, I know, but it is what it is. I noticed that, at the time, David and Kim didn't have a "subscribe" box, and so I wrote and suggested they add one. 

In conversations about how to do it, the question of comments came up, and it occurred to me that perhaps not all of you know how to post comments. So here's a tutorial. 

Scroll to the bottom of the blog post, and look for a link saying "X comments." In the photo above, it's "0 comments." To post a comment, click on that link. 

A new screen will open, containing a box in which you can make your comment, and a little doodad thing to prove to Blogger that you're not a robot. You put your comment in the box, obey the I'm-not-a-robot instruction, click "post comment," and there you go. 

If you'd like to read my brother's blog - his name is Rand Cooper, and he writes for Commonweal Magazine - click here, and then search for Rand. His posts cover a wide range of topics, from politics to politeness to movies and more. 

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Dog of the Day

Koko and Abby, the best of friends, are also maniacs and morons. The maniac quality, you can infer tell from the wreckage that surrounds them in our living room, in this photo. 

The moron quality you can infer from the fact that this morning, they ate a lightbulb. Or at least chewed it up. It was not a new-style bulb, thank heavens. And I don't know how much they actually ate, if any at all. I do know they broke it into little pieces and scattered it throughout the house. 

The vet said we should feed them right away, and that they probably would be fine. I have my fingers crossed, and would welcome any good thoughts or prayers any of you can send our way. 

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A Final Thought

"A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art."

- Paul Cezanne