This & That #11: November 2018 – Open Studios

Wild about Elephants

The more I paint elephants, the more I love them. Here are Thai and Simunye, just finished. Measuring 48×48, each portrait is close to actual size. Thai is a 50-year-old Asian male and Simunye a 20-year-old African female. They are so different: their skin, ears, foreheads, their texture and coloring. They may be the most […]

Seven Wonders of the World

I may have forgotten to mention that I’ve chosen SEVEN of my endangered species paintings for limited edition prints, in two sizes: 14″ x 14″ or 20″x 20″ (plus an inch all around for the white border). No prints are larger than their original painting, so my 16″ paintings (such as Indah on the left […]

choosing the next

shipped 20 paintings out of the studio. empty walls. Working on a 48×48 portrait of Sango, a beautiful lion and first-time dad I met almost a year ago at the Denver Zoo. Usually, as I get involved in a painting, I have some sense of my subject coming forward and entering the painting. If their presence is weak, […]

meeting my subjects…

Last week I finished painting a Malayan tiger I’d met in Houston in May 2015. While painting, I didn’t know the tiger’s name or age or gender. I only knew that two of the more than twenty times I came to visit, the tiger would be awake, sitting up in the grass, surveying their world […]

Heading Home

The timing of my visit to the Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita was just about perfect. Their six new African elephants who came over from Swaziland in March were finally all comfy with each other and with Stephanie, the resident 45-year-old, and all could share their five-acre yard together. Here are five of seven, new matriarch Stephanie […]

KINGDOM ANIMALIA, Part One

KINGDOM ANIMALIA. Where do I start with this many-threaded story? I really do not know how to paint right now. I can paint, surely. My skills have even improved with all the practice of Better Angels. Yet I say I don’t know how to paint NOW because I spent three years using only “00” […]

Waiting for Paint to Dry

Alas! Acrylic has never been my medium. In my hands I have always found it inelegant and clumsy. This is not to demean any of my wonderful artist friends who handle it so well. My pet peeve has been how quickly it dries. Nonetheless I do use it from time to time as underpaint or […]