#399 "Road to Riverdale" 2003
#398 "Mansion Sundown" 2003 oil, 8" x 16"
#320 "After the Storm" 1997, oil , 24" x 30"
#327 "Starry Night" 1997, oil, 22" x 28"
#329 "Spirit of Calvert" 1998, oil, (28"
x 36")
#363 "Riversdale Mansion" 1997-2000, oil, (38" x 60")
#338 "Street Mural" 1998-9, oil, (28" x 40")
#367 "The S & J" 2001, oil ( 11" x 16")
#364 "The Reading Lesson" 2001, oil, (24" 30")
#395 "Sundown" 2003 oil, 16" x 20
In the summer of 1999
I went down to the river to paint. The Northeast Branch of the Anacostia is only a few block from my home.
I set up just below the old bridge on Riverdale Road. Though the architecture of the bridge was the focus
of my painting, it was the rushing water at my feet which captured my attention and plunged me into a new
series of works. Water as
a subject was not new to me. Growing up in the Fox River Valley in Wisconsin I spent many days not only playing
on the water, but drawing and painting it while I was in high school. Eventually I will put some of these works
in my picture biography. Though most of the water works during my early years were done from memory or conjured
up in my imagination, water was a favored subject. While in college in Milwaukee Wisconsin, I would sit on
the shore of Lake Michigan and do studies of the waves that came crashing in on the beach. I drew a lot of
boats in the marina and was always trying to capture the liquid reflections which moved around the boat hulls and
pier. It was a fascination with movement and reflective surfaces that always seemed to enter into my work.
But now, after a great deal of experience in
painting and drawing from life, I became totally engaged in the subject and felt I was seeing it for the first
time. It was so exciting to find a fresh challenge and to realize that it has always been there for me to
study with an artist's eye. I now became fascinated not only with the movement, the reflections, and the glittering
surface, but with what was beneath the surface. The transparency, translucency, the color above and below
the surface all became a challenge to replicate with paint.
All of the works below, except the last, are
from my Riverdale Park series.
#343 "Bridge on Riverdale Road (low view)"
1999
(12" x 18")
#344 "Bridge on Riverdale Road
(looking south)"1999 (12" x 18")
#351 "Northwest
Branch Rapid" 1999
(18"x 24")
#340 "Stone Bridge on
Rock Creek" 1999
(18" x 24")
For more paintings of the River click here