Allendorf Elevator #3

Allendorf Elevator #3 | 5"x7" | oil on hardboard

Allendorf Elevator #1 and #2

I just returned from a quick trip to Charlotte, NC. Travel always stimulates my creative juices. It's great to see new things and experience life in another part of the country. When we were driving home from the airport today, my love for good ole Iowa was renewed as I gazed at the fields, farms and small towns.

I posted Allendorf Elevator #1 in October, and Allendorf Elevator #2 in November so figured it was time to move to variation #3. This one starts bending those straight lines and starts to flatten some of the planes.

Iowa. Home, sweet home.

Interested in buying it?

Cornstalks

Cornstalks | 6"x6" | oil on hardboard

This winter seems like it has had an abundance of gray days. Gray, snowy, overcast and frequently foggy. While a sunny day is almost always a welcome sight, I have developed an appreciation for the grayness of this kind of day. The whiteness of the snow combined with gray skies gives everything a gray muted tone. Even a bright red stop sign becomes muted on a gray winter day. I could imagine artist Andrew Wyeth painting a scene like this if he had lived in Iowa.

I was driving home from LeMars recently (on one of these gray days) when my eyes were drawn to these cornstalks in the field along the road. I returned later and shot some photos. I'm sure there were some other motorists who drove by thinking to themselves, "What is this kook doing shooting photos of an empty, snow-filled cornfield?"

I'm including another close-up so you can get a little closer look.


Cornstalks | detail

SOLD

Karin

Karin | 5"x7" | oil on hardboard

This is a quick study. If you recall the recent artist portrait swap, it was organized by an artist named Karin Jurick. Coordinating 180 artists and the entire process I'm sure was a massive undertaking. As a surprise thank you, another artist organized 118 of the participating artists- and all 118 did a painting of Karin as a surprise for her.

I chose to paint mine really close-up, rather than painting her whole head. I thought that might make it stand out from the rest of the group. We all worked from the same photo of Karin, and it's interesting to see all the different interpretations. I'm not crazy about how mine turned out, but it was fun to loosely paint this. Click on the thumbnails below to peek at all 118.

Hershey's Kiss

A Single Kiss | 6"x6" | oil on hardboard

Recently, a friend and fellow artist, Darren Maurer, did a couple of paintings featuring Hershey kisses. With Valentines Day coming up this weekend and the fact that I seem to be in candy mode lately, I thought I'd paint a kiss as well. Capturing the reflective wrinkly wrapper was enjoyable.

Kisses have been around for over 100 years (since 1907) and Hersheys makes over 80 million of them every day. That's a lotta chocolate.


I also wanted to share with you an article that appeared in last weeks edition of The Weekender magazine. It featured a story about my blog and artwork. You can click here for a link to the story.

Happy Valentines Day.

Interested in buying A Single Kiss

Double Bubble & Cruise

Double Bubble | 5"x7" | oil on hardboard

Add this to the list of candy paintings I've done. I enjoy painting these. I think it might be a combination of my love for art, graphic design, and a little candy nostalgia that makes it appealing to me.

It's easy to find beauty in the things we love. Sometimes I need to look harder to see the beauty in other things. The beauty is almost always there, but just waiting to be discovered.

It's been a couple of weeks since my last posting. It's mostly because we took a week-long Caribbean cruise with friends last week. Cruising is something I've never done before, but we had a great time. Here are a few pictures from the trip.


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