A Blog About Oil Painting

 View Across to Edmonds. 11x14, oil on linen panel. 2017. This painting is based on a small plein air study from last winter. It was a cold day and windy enough to blow over my easel onto the rocks; I ended up doing the sketch on a setup that was held together with string. T...

Carkeek Shore 2.0 (plein air/studio). 8x10, oil on linen panel. 2016. Back in May of this year I painted on location at Carkeek Park in Seattle. Although the day was really pleasant and there was no time pressure, I wasn't able to get the painting to a place where I was truly happy with it. After a ...

Rain Over Winslow. 6x10, oil on linen panel. 2016. As the pile of sketches in my studio can attest, trying to paint the Puget Sound in winter is a recipe for failure. Studio or plein air, it's especially hard to do because there's so little to actually build a painting around. The only thing that br...

  Dancing With the Light. 6x10, oil on linen panel. 2016 There is something particularly special about the light in winter in the Pacific Northwest. There are many days when the sky is completely overcast and the day is totally gray, yet sometimes the air is clear and the clouds race across th...

Blue Pacific (study). about 6x10, oil on linen. 2016 The Fisherman's Terminal in Seattle is potential goldmine of artistic opportunity but the imagery is hard to capture when working on location. A painting partner described it as "the black diamond slope of plein air painting".  The problem is...