January Grey

Today is Australia Day, and for the third year in a row, I am not observing it in Australia. I miss the color and sultry currents that filled my senses there. The flora and fauna and the sounds of it all permeated my thoughts, and spilled out to the canvas and journal for years. But in Wisconsin there is another current blowing, the water froze further out in the harbor of Baileys this year, and the geese stuck around but were further out as well, but today its barely freezing, still very cloudy and that Wisconsin grey has numbed my paint box, this is obvious if you look at the last three painting studies I posted today. The snow is dingy and shallow, with patches of ice lurking in criminal corners, waiting for someone to take a misstep.

These three little paintings are record of the work I pursued this month after a 3 month hiatus from painting. After the fall workshop with Bonnie Paruch, painting plein air nocturnes, and the two days painting with Mary Ulm Mayhew in mid September, I found myself in a lull. Not from lack in the workshops, just too many distractions. Holidays came and went, I scolded myself for not painting, went to several critiques, entered a few paintings in an exhibit at the Miller Art Museum SPIRIT OF THE SEASON exhibit with the Door County Art League. (old work) and then the Peninsula School of Art had their Janaury SALON, which offered up hundreds of art works by area artists, a big show, a good party and a few people I know even sold work there. I put three works in that show, and had good comments from people whose opinions I respect. One of the paintings I will have to photograph and post soon, it is full of color, and I realize it is a cousin of a painting I did in Australia, and it was made last summer at the height of rural color, flowers and birds everywhere, a celebration of color is hanging in the wings for me right now. Its all about painting snow, but we have none. Not yet anyway.