Shapleigh, Maine

I'VE HAD MYSELF a busy time lately, and it's been fun! The Mystic Outdoor Art Festival was a success - and if you were a part of making it a success, thank you.                                                                                                                                Before and after, I spent time with friends and family, staying at our daughter's house in Rhode Island (with a pool!) and during a brief trip to Maine. I was able to drive up to Maine on one day, and back the next.                                                                                                                                              Crazy, a little, but it let me spend time with my aunt and uncle, two sets of cousins and their families (one, whom I rarely see, lives in St. Paul), my brother and his wife and daughter, and my friend Heather, (below) who came with me on one of my very first painting trips.                                                                                                                                          It was a whirlwind - and it was fun! We lived in Maine on and off for 10 years, and while it was a tough, and often depressing place to live, there was much I loved about it, including the landscape. I rejoiced that I had time to squeeze out a couple paintings, including this one, at left,  of a lake in Shapleigh, Maine.                                                       

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Dog of the Day

 It's Annie, the bulldog who lives with my brother Rand Cooper, his wife Molly and their teenager, Larkin. And of course, Archie, who, I believe, thinks Annie is a little nuts. She clearly enjoyed her tutu T-shirt. And why not? It made her so special!

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A Final Thought

"Art should be an oasis: a place or refuge from the hardness of life." 

- Fernando Botero

You Know You Will

You Know You Will

Oil on black canvas, 30x30

Please click here to email me for price and availability

It's hard to tell, from this photograph, how bright and full of life and sunshine this painting is. This one is another of those big steps for me, a leap that brings all that I've been doing into a new light, a new place. There's a new feeling in this one, and it is something about freedom, and bliss and the simple cheerfulness of a sunny hillside on a summer afternoon.

I've worked and worked on this photograph, hoping to make it reflect the painting more truly, but this is the best I can do. In the piece, bright green dominates, and the orangey pinks of the spiky flowers hum and resonate over the green, above the blue and purple, all under a clear, sunny sky.

Unless it sells beforehand, I'll have this piece at my next show, which is CenterFest, in Durham, NC, Sept. 16-17. Click here for more info!  And if you'd like to see this piece before I leave for Durham, please drop me a line, and come visit me in Wachapreague.

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Here's a Pair that Beats a Full House

Hahahaha, it's my brother Rand (right) and his childhood-into-adulthood friend Jon, on a recent trip to Cape Cod. 

I can explain the T-shirts - the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts chose one of my paintings for their T-shirt design this year, and I gave a couple to Rand. 

I can't explain the shorts. 

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Dog of the Day

This is the dog of a friend I met on Facebook, and then later met in real life, near the Suwannee River, east of Jacksonville, Florida. It was such fun to meet her in real life! 

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A Final Thought

"I don't want life to imitate art. I want life to be art."

- Carrie Fisher