This picture is shown in a juried exhibition at the Dennos museum in Traverse City, MI until April 1st celebrating the museum’s 20th anniversary year.

The ‘seascape’ below was done as a study for the painting shown here.

In September, this small study was shown in a juried exhibition in Frankfort, MI.

oil on board, 18 inches x 24 inches

First painting done in spring 2011. Northern Michigan is now our home.

Improvised from a photograph taken near Otter Creek in the Sleeping Bear Dunes

Two oil paintings, each 12 x 12 inches

Different forms of meditation, quiet and whirling.

Practicing painting a wave

12 x 24, oil on board

A montage combining images from Michigan, New Mexico and the Pacific Northwest

Moonlight:

tilted sunshine,

Finally,  a monster rock!
What am I doing to myself? Will my perception be altered by such playing with images? Creatures learn what they see. Kittens raised in a world of vertical stripes stumble over a horizontal stick.

I remember more clearly last spring’s photographs of mudflats, rather than the 3-D world out there. Would I now see 2-dimensionally walking along the Jadebusen at low tide? Is my view of the world altered by my photographs?

A year ago, reading about Cezanne, I wondered what prompted the strange perspectives of his landscapes. Oddly enough, Cezanne himself never found anything unusual in his manner of addressing perspective. Did he have an abnormality in his visual system? Did he poke fun at people asking him questions?

A more recent artist, Adolph Gottlieb – according to Wikipedia – first painted cacti and barren scenery in the desert. Next, he inserted mysterious incongruities into otherwise normal landscapes until finally, he ‘distilled his expansiveness into a more basic abstract form’. I would love to know whether he painted these abstractions from permutations of landscapes that evolved in his mind (without looking any longer at landscapes), or whether he began to actually see abstract shapes within the landscape.

Do you see an almost finished task?
Do you see destruction?

Inspired by the black and white photographs recently shown here, I converted this color photograph from northern Michigan to grey scale.

Intrigued by Colin Jago’s luscious blacks, I used the merge tool to increase the contrast a little to get a little more black. What else should I do or have done in my first attempt at processing black and white photos?

Update on beaver activity from May 30,2007

To illustrate a simple poem, I went to a textile shop in the old garment center of Manhattan and bought the dull yellow linen for the background and patches of colorful silk. Troels was doubtful when I showed him the mix of colors and announced that they would turn it into a wall hanging (40 x55). Now, a few years later, he still likes the outcome.

The sowing was done by hand to avoid machine rattling so that Troels could enjoy the peace of Northern Michigan during the winter holidays. To the original shapes of the wall hanging, I added some symbols for events in our life such as the little piece of wool on the wrong side of the river, commemorating our dog.