Painting

“The shape of things”. Painted February 2022.  11″x14″. Acrylic on canvas textured board.  Day 23 of the Opus Daily Practice Challenge.  Prompt word “Transformative”. Yesterday’s exercise was all about discovering and abstracting shapes.  Today’s prompt word was “transformative”, so I spent the day transforming the ideas I explored in yesterday’s drawing into a painting based on the same […]

“In the moment”. Painted February 2022.  10″x10″. Acrylic on cradled wood panel.  I’ve been doing a month long challenge sponsored by the local art supply company Opus.  Today’s prompt word was “present”, which I interpreted to mean “being present” or in the moment. True to my Scottish heritage, I can’t stand wasting paint, so when my stay-wet

Sweet Reflections.  Painted February 2022.  24”x24”.  Acrylic on Canvas. Just a few hundred meters away from the Bluff is a heron rookery, so it is very common to find a heron standing motionless on shoreline rocks near the bottom of our ramp in a perfectly transcendental state.  If an animal can exist totally in the moment, at one with

“Set Fire to the Rain.”  Painted January 2022.  30” x 24”.  Acrylic on Canvas. Almost three years ago, I did a painting of a family in New Zealand playing in the water at Muriwai beach (famous for it’s black sand and large colony of gannets).  Although I liked that painting, it wasn’t quite where I wanted to go.  I knew

SOLD. “Good Day Sunshine.” Painted January 2022. 12″ x 16″. Acrylic on Canvas. Sometimes the best antidote for the long grey days of a West coast winter is to spend a few hours painting a summer scene full of sunshine. Last summer our friend John drove up to see our place on the coast and

SOLD. “In Autumn, Beauty Stood.” Painted December 2021.  16”x16” Acrylic on Canvas Last week, my mother mentioned that she was looking for a painting of flowers to hang on her wall and decided to put her eldest son to work. I’m always up for a challenge and jumped right on to it, so I’d have something

SOLD. “Sunset on Savary Island.” Painted November 2021.  24”x24” Acrylic on Canvas Every few paintings, I have a total failure and no matter how much tweaking, I can’t salvage it.  Eventually I cover it with white gesso and start a new painting over the old one.  I’ve noticed that these new paintings are generally more successful than the old

SOLD. “Stella”  Acrylic on Canvas, 12”x12”, October 2021. We’ve been living on the Bluff since the start of May, sleeping in the Love Shack, cooking meals in the outdoor kitchen, and relaxing in the covered solarium.  It’s been magical watching the humpback whales breaching in the strait at sunset, while hummingbirds chase each other around the feeding

“Blue Shadows Conjure Me.” 14″x11″ Acrylic on Canvas Textured Board. Every few paintings, I try and paint either a portrait or a figurative painting.  These paintings generally scare the crap out of me, but I know I’ll never get any better if I avoid painting things that challenge me (faces, hands, crowds, etc.), so there it

SOLD. “I hold my breath”.  12″x24″. Painted in March/April 2021. Acrylic on wood panel. $288.00 Canadian. Winter Sunset on Marr Lake at 4:24 pm.   About a kilometre South of my parent’s ranch, just over a few rolling hills is our neighbour Patricia’s house. She has a stunning view of the Rockies, with only a