Kim's Farm

Kim's Farm

Oil on canvas, 40x40

Commission

A long and wonderful project has come to a happy end, and I'd like to share the story with you. 

At the start of the fall, I got an email from a woman I'd met at a show in Omaha. She wanted a painting of the Nebraska farm where she grew up. She wanted a big painting, with heavy texture, of the farm and a cow or two. 

Unlike many artists, I love doing commissions. Ones that are projects, like this one, are especially fun and intriguing to me. Maybe this comes from working in newsrooms for so long and seeing how the energy and ideas expand and improve when others are involved. Kim sent me a bunch of photos of the farm, but for some reason, I couldn't put the photos together in my mind into a cohesive whole. The poor woman explained it to me, walked me around the property virtually, and answered my questions again and again, and still I couldn't see it. 

So I decided to actually go and see it. I knew I could pass relatively near the farm on my Big Skies Painting trip. Kim gave me directions, and on my way back, I stopped in and saw the farm. 

It still was not without its issues! First, I drove right by it and got more than a little lost. I called Kim, and she suggested that I facetime her - and she was able to look through my phone at the landscape around me, and direct me to the right place. 

I walked around, took a bunch of photos, and, when I got home, made a sketch of the farm. Kim had a couple ideas, I had a few more, and I made a small painting. It was at this point that we both realized that I was situating the farmhouse incorrectly. I had my norths and wests mixed up. It took a while of patient Kim's coaxing and explaining before the whole thing fell into place in my head - and then I was able to paint. 

I had some ideas while I was painting, and Kim had some ideas, and we communicated back and forth, and in the end, this is the painting I made - and the painting she loves. 

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2 pancakes

2 eggs

2 bacon

The most incomprehensible sign ever! And it's been up for years. Hahahaha!!! 

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Dog of the Day

Toby (the dog) and Ira (the human). I met them in a hotel somewhere this summer - Indiana, maybe? Ira rescued Toby after the dog escaped from a fire, and was abandoned by his humans. Toby is old now, partly deaf and partly blind, and much loved.

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A Final Thought

"Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience treacherous, judgment difficult." 

- Hippocrates

Nebraska Farm

Nebraska Farm

Oil on black canvas, 10x10, from a photograph by Jeff Swanson

sold

Well,  I've had two loser shows in a row, in Pittsburgh, PA, and Lorton, VA. At least in Lorton, I made expenses, didn't lose money on the show, and got to spend time with one of my lovely collectors, who bought Nebraska Farm, and is also a sponsor of the Big Skies Painting Trip.                                                                                                                               I have a show this weekend in Durham, NC, and while part of me is - as ever - hopeful, part of me is feeling beaten and downtrodden, a little bit sure this show will also be a bomb. I am focusing on hope, though, and on remembering that people like my paintings, and people buy my paintings, and two weak shows in a row is an anomaly. Coach Joe would tell me to look at the year as a whole, and not to focus on one or two (or three) shows, and as a whole, it's been a good show season. Even so, I feel more than a little dread about this weekend. 

But I will square my shoulders and raise my chin and head into this show with faith and hope intact. 

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RECENTLY, A PAINTING of mine was included in a nice online group exhibit, all about nature. It's on a cool and very helpful business -of-art website, Artsy Shark. You can check out the exhibit by clicking here. 

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Dog of the Day

Doc and Lulu were neutered on Tuesday.  Much to my surprise, Doc - solemn, serious, sensitive - took his operation in stride. If he weren't wearing a collar, you'd never know anything had happened to him. But Lulu, who is full of light and love and sunshine, is miserably unhappy. She hates the cone, can't figure out how to do anything while wearing it, she's itchy and unhappy and flinging her body around in her little crate. I feel terrible for her. 

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A Final Thought

"If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams." 

- Yann Martel, "Life of Pi"