Usually I don’t show a painting in progress to my artist friends.  I wait until it is more finished before I invite constructive comments. But yesterday, I showed this painting to an art buddy who commented that it is finished. That took me by surprise because I have many ideas of how to continue working  on what I merely considered an ‘underpainting’ of a girl diving to the bottom of Lake Michigan.

Earlier, during our lunch, some of the artists had discussed the difficulty to know  when a work is finished. The danger being that one could overdo it, thereby destroying it. With that in mind, rather than continuing working on my painting,  I decided to do the same motif over but then experiment with further ideas. 

Do you know when your work is finished – painting, writing, sculpting, designing your garden, inventing a new cooking recipe…?

I am not just a regional painter but also a seasonal painter, that is, I paint wintry motif during the cold months and summery motifs during the warm months.  #1 and #2 were painted in the winters of 2020 and 2021, respectively.  

The motifs for the two paintings come from a video that Karl took at the Empire village beach. We extracted six frames for a potential six-painting-series. I may paint more next winter.  Initially, I was not sure that I liked the subdued winter colors since I usually paint with brighter colors. But now we love looking at these two paintings on our wall.

My paintings are captured by Vada Color. The high resolution files are used to make giclee prints on either paper or canvas of paintings that are not for sale. Maybe, some day, I will publish my paintings  as book . 

 

oil on wood panel 16 x 24 in

Below is an old seascape painting of Lake Michigan with a view of South Manitou that I had been wondering what to do with.

The solution came to me when my friend Cindy  took a snapshot of me at another beach of Lake Michigan. I extracted the figure from Cindy’s snapshot and ‘overlaid’ it with a photo of my old seascape painting using an adobe photoshop algorithm.

Surrealistically rising out of water with my taupe pants making less of a statement than my orange jacket.

Frozen winter shore —-Snowy waves rolling inland—-Sunshine in ice crystals

A single crow flew alongside a rim of ice hills on the shore of Lake Michigan, Sleeping Bear Dunes, February 2022. Finally it settled down on one of the ice hills. Photos of successive patterns of its flight were assembled in adobe photoshop and freely painted on a wood panel, 84 x 22 in, oil

Acknowledging my friends: Dewey Blocksma crafted the panel and Jenny Munten helped arranging the flight pattern.

Fishing at the shore of North Bar Lake, Sleeping Bear Dunes, at Sunset.

Oil on Aluminium panel, 12 x 12 in