A Walk Out Back

Tuesday this past week I had the opportunity to take a walk in the woods behind the house. Used to do it quite often. But is has been a long while. All of the snowmobile trails that were heavily in use the last time I hiked here are now mostly invisible with overgrown with vegetation. I was able to find my way making a loop over to the trailer park next door. All in all about 2 miles. It was a beautiful day and I was able to grab a few nice reference photos for paintings.

"Twenty Mile Brook," 6"x8" oil on wood panel

This painting  is of a view looking up the brook that runs next to the house from a where a trail crosses it.

Re-Imagining Views

I have been scanning old photos from boxes of my mom's in preparation of downsizing prior making a move out to Peaks Island. In doing so, I came across a shoe box filled with old postcards that she had collected over the years. Looking at the ones she had of Peaks Island, I got the idea to re-imagine some views of the island, from the early 20th century, as paintings. The first card and view that caught my eye was entitled "Pumpkin-Nob off Peaks Island, Me." ca. 1909.

It was an interesting view that I don't often get to see because it is from the water and I am not a boat owner. The card I have is clearly a colorized photo and very much faded, so I re-imagined a brighter pallet, trying to visualize what it might have looked had I been the one taking the photo and not so much trying to reproduce the postcard.

"Pumpkin-Nob off Peaks Island, Me." 6"x8" oil on wood panel. The size format of the painting is different from that of the postcard so I was able to add more sky.

5 Months....Sheesh!

Not very good at this blogging thing and I am deffinitely not going to get any better if I don't do it more often than once every 5 months. That's less than useless. Bad news is that over the last 5 months there hasn't been a whole lot going on in my studio to blog about. Since my last post I started having some problems with double vision. Multiple new glasses prescriptions and 5 months later, it has turned into a full-on neurological adventure. They think Miller-Fisher syndrome. I will let you google that, like I had too. Consequently, it has left me with one frosted glasses lens on the bad eye, which has turned out and doesn't track properly with the good eye. Not sure yet how much use the affected eye will be again. Doctors are still working on trying to understand what it is that actually happened. So moving on.

The vision has kept me out of the studio until late because, between work and doctors visits, there wasn't a lot of time left.  I was able to kick out several monotype prints and a commissioned portrait for my niece's fiancé, but it was a struggle. Good news, I am fully retired now. So, no excuses, not even the eye thing. Spent yesterday, all day, in the studio. A glorious day was had. Had to work out a few depth perception details, like trying to discern when my brush was actually hitting panel. Also had to  change the lighting in the studio. But, a few do-overs later and voila! "An Island View," 6"x8" oil on wood panel. Think I will keep them small for a while.

Slow To Get Back

Slow to get back into my studio since the sudden passing of my wife in March. She was champion and head critic of my artwork, always there to keep me on task. She found and made time in our schedules for me to paint and print by selflessly taking on much of our mundane daily/weekly household chores herself. Her friendly outgoing personality complimented my severe lack thereof, always having new ideas on venues and outlets for my art. She handled the business of my art in the background. I will tell you that I find that the business of art blows. If I have to focus on the business of art, I am not painting, and my wife realized that if making art became a job for me our house would just fill up with my art. She always felt there was value in my works as affordable art. So, she took on the job so it didn't have to become my job.

Since her passing, I have had a hard time finding joy in creativity. Only recently have I felt her gentle force nudging me back into my studio. I am starting to see renewed inspiration from spending time on Peaks Island, especially in the places on the island we liked to go. I have been able to: finish a couple of paintings that were started before her illness, complete a new small painting and start, for me, a very large painting (30" x 40"). The latter I hope to post progress photos of.

She gave me the gift of the philosophy that "everything I make is for sale. If it doesn't sell it always makes a great gift." So if you see anything on my website that moves you, or if you have a reference photo and would like to commission piece, you can get a hold of me through the Richard Boyd Art Gallery or through contact information available on my website.

Good Start On New Portrait

After work yesterday I set up my exhibit in the High School library. The display turned out very nicely. The only concern that I had was that the tabletop display easels that I chose couldn’t be opened fully to their designed size due to the depth of the shelf. Fortunately they had rubber feet on the legs which should prevent them from sliding and falling off the shelf. The librarian commented on how nice the paintings looked in the easels because it raised them off the top of the bookshelf making the paintings more visible. She even liked the idea enough that she might order some so that she can display student art in the same manner.

This past weekend I was able to get a very good start on a new portrait. I completed the sketch and began the base painting. Trying to not get carried away with the background. The reference image that I am using is very busy, having been take in a bar. While I want the background to be recognizable as a bar, I don’t want that to compete or draw attention away from the primary painting subject matter. Always a challenge when using a digital image for reference. Using the squinting technique as a way to blur the background.

Base Sketch

Base Painting

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Exhibiting At Kingswood Regional High School Library

I am pleased to anounce that I will be exhibiting six paintings at the Kingswood Regional Highschool Library in Wolfeboro, NH. I am not sure how long the exhibit will run as discussion in this regard has been kind of casual and still evolving. My wife who teaches in the Middle School, which also uses the library, made the connection for me. Towards the end of January, she approached the librarian and asked if some of my works would be a good fit for the space they were trying to fill. The librarian was intrigued by my connection to a teacher at the school and thought it would be neat  they could learn something new about my wife; being married to an artist.

I had my wife take a few photos of the place so I could get an idea of how I would present my work. Because the library is a part of a new facility upgrade, and the fact that the ceilings are so high it was my thought that they would be reluctant in having me drill into the new block walls to place hooks so that I could hang the paintings. I decided instead to obtain small inexpensive table top display easels, sized appropriately for the corresponding paintings. In addition to the display easels for the paintings I also was able to purchase small easels to support an artist bio card and painting information cards. The paintings and the cards will in turn be displayed on the tops of the book cases. The larger easels were obtained from Dick Blick and the smaller from Amazon.

The six paintings in this exhibit are all acrylic paintings and includes three figurative and three landscapes. The three landscape paintings are are local and part of a ‘drive by’ series I did; “Driving by Cornish, ME”, “Driving By Repair” and “Driving By The Corner.” The three figurative paintings on exhibit include; “Self Portrait 2018,” “Michael And Riley,” “Mr. Mojo Risin.” The latter was on of a series of fan art that I did as a triptych that include a pointing of Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin. With the exception of “Mr. Mojo Risin” the paintings on exhibit are done with a grey scale pallet. The painting of Jim Morrison is done with a limited infrared pallet.

"Driving By Cornish, ME"

"Driving By The Corner

"Driving By Repair"

"Self Portrait, 2018"

"Michael And Riley"

"Mr. Mojo Risin"

 

Distractions, Distractions! How I Got Here 001

Been plenty of distractions to get to this point. I have been wanting to do a blog for quite a while. The business of art blows. Finding time to paint, or print, is hard enough without the making time for self promotion, framing, etc. when you have a day job. This blog is really for me. A place where I can document process, and notes on my studio, and my art. I offer it publicly so that maybe someone might find my struggles of becoming an artist helpful in their own plight.

I looked at a lot of other artist websites, to see who they used to host their sites and how they used the sites they created. It seemed, from this review, that most artists felt the need for a static repository for information about them, and there works; a sort of virtual resume. In addition, they used separate social media or a blog sites to reach out for self promotion purposes. I found that, with the exception of only a few very successful artists, websites were not used as a sales vehicle. Setting up a blog means having a website and a blog account. I had neither six months ago. So I thought that I would start by creating a website on one of those free sites that you read about.

I did some research and found my way to 000webhost With experience in web design I put up my sight and within a month I found myself dealing with a whole host of issues like, limited bandwidth, storage limits, and very inconsistent up-time. So very quickly I found myself looking around for a permanent solution. What I found was that 000webhost was really a company operation under hostinger I couldn’t export the free website that I had spent a month designing in a format suitable for porting over to a new pay for hosting site. If I went with a new host I would have to redesign the website using their templates. I reluctantly decided to use hostinger and save myself having to rebuild a website that I was happy with. The final salt in the wound came when I went to register and pay with hostinger I did so on a weekend. My credit card was locked because hostinger operates out of a foreign country, Cypress. Banks find dealing with business in this part of the world unsecure, so I had to wait until the following Monday to authorize the my bank to make payment to this company. Whew… Since that time I have found that this hosting company has been surprisingly responsive and I have zero down time. Have a look!