A Vintage Christmas

In our family we've been decorating for Christmas with homemade lawn displays since I was a kid. My Dad (holding the sheep) has created many lighted display items, cut from wood and filled with lights. My Grandpa painted scenes 40-50 years ago that still make their way from storage in the garage, to outdoors for the frigid month of December. They have held up remarkably well considering they get exposed to sub-zero temps, and battered by NW Iowa rain, sleet and snow.

You've seen a couple of our scenes in the past, but this year we decided to try something different. Every year the Christmas season approaches, and we say to ourselves, "Why didn't we work on a NEW Christmas scene for our yard?" It's just easy to put up one of our old favorites instead. This year, we were talking about an old nativity scene that my Dad and Grandpa made back in the 1960s, and it has been stored up in my Dad's cluttered garage rafters since probably 1970 or thereabout.

Thanksgiving morning, my brother Bruce and I decided to haul stuff out of the rafters and see what kind of shape the scene was in. As you can see in the photo above, some of the figures looked better than others. Mary, baby Jesus, and a couple of the shepherds were peeling extensively and needed some attention. The remaining figures were dusty, but cleaned up pretty well with a bucket of soapy water.

The 40 years these pieces spent in the rafters aged them with a "crusty chic" that can't be duplicated without the passage of time. A little stained, aged, faded and worn. Beautiful in its own way. We plugged in the string of blue lights and they worked!

Look at this star. Dad made this out of heavy upholstery cardboard, duct tape, the outer edge is plywood and the face is covered with a layer of cheesecloth to diffuse the light. I just love this thing and the beautiful brown the cheesecloth has turned.

I took the three figures home that were in need of some TLC. I sanded the loose peeling paint off them and freshened them up.

 The stable was covered with burlap. It was not in great shape either, but once again it was old and beat up and had a lot of character.

 Here is Bruce arranging and driving stakes for the figures.

And here is the finished scene, illuminated at night–complete with fresh straw all around. We were really pleased with the way it came together and my Dad was thrilled to see it up in his front yard again after all these years. If you're in Maurice this Christmas season to look at lights, make sure you head to the far Southwest corner of town to take a look for yourself. Merry Christmas.

Canvas Maker

My dad has made and stretched many of my canvases in the 30+ years that I've been painting. Every once in a while a big project like this comes along and he needs to go into "super-sized" mode.

Here he is in the basement of the shop. This was back when the snow was still flying. He fired up the old pot-bellied stove you can see in the background, and went to work laminating poplar boards to create the sturdy stretcher frames for the canvases.

Here are a couple of photos of dad standing next to one of the larger lower canvases, showing the back side of the stretched canvas. The Prairie Winds artwork has four separate canvases–the top two canvases  in the piece are 48"x48" and the bottom two are each  48"x78". He also built into each canvas, a set of cleats which allowed for custom mounting these directly  and snug to the wall.

Dad has always been very creative and talented, especially when it comes to finding solutions to challenging projects that need to be built or fixed.

He was my first supporter and encourager to pursue my passion for art, encouraging me to draw and paint from my earliest memories of childhood.

Dad will be turning 77 on Thursday! If you'd like to post your greetings here, or send me an e-mail. I'll see that he gets them.

Cloud study

Cloud study | 6"x6" | oil on hardboard

The Angels' Song

It's hard to believe that Christmas is less than three weeks away. Our little town is rather known in the area as a place to come and view outdoor Christmas lighting and displays. I have shown some of my lawn displays in the past, and decided to paint a new one this year.

I also thought it might be fun to take a few snapshots of it as it progressed so you could see how it developed. Above you can see the first shot I took.


This is at the point where I started to block in the fiery bright angelic colors. It started to come to life a bit more at this point.


Here is a close-up at an early stage of a shepherd's face. This particular shepherd is probably my favorite. I didn't put a lot of time into any of the figures, mostly because people are almost always driving past and viewing it from the road. Viewing from that distance forgives a lot of errors.


This is a closeup of the lower part of the angel. This was probably the most fun to paint. Free flowing paint and brilliant colors.


We put it out in the front yard on Wednesday of last week. The paint was not fully dry, but we put it out anyway. It snowed 3-4 inches this weekend, so it looks really nice surrounded by a fresh layer of the white stuff.


The Angels' Song
Here is a little better look at the entire finished piece. It is what I would call a very traditional interpretation of this scene–one you might see in a Sunday school classroom. I think people are drawn to the traditional images and music that permeate the Christmas season.

If you are in the area, I invite you to come view the lights as well as the new painting at the Vander Stelts.

Dad's Profile

Dad's Profile | 6"x6" | oil on hardboard
My Dad is always a good subject for a portrait. He has had a big white beard for many years and turns the heads of a lot of small children at Christmas time.


I remember drawing his profile when I was a kid. I don't know if that drawing is still around or not. There is something I like about a profile. The window light streaming into the room really worked perfectly in adding dimension to his face. This was based on a photo I took after a Sunday dinner at my brother Bruces' house.

View of Landscape West of Maurice

View of Landscape West of Maurice | 30"x40" | oil on canvas

This is a fairly large work that I recently bartered for a new custom iron railing created by, Lauren Ochsner, a talented local artisan. His acreage can actually be seen in the distance toward the far right of the painting.

Lauren stopped me on the street not long after I delivered the painting. He said he had already framed it and hung it in his home. One of his adult sons saw it and said, "Dad, I'd like to have that after you and Mom are gone." Well, we both had a chuckle over that, but it did make me feel pretty good.

I think it's one of the things I enjoy most about being an artist–that hopefully many of my pieces will be enjoyed long after I leave this earth. I know I still continue to get constant enjoyment out of viewing the paintings of my grandfather, and he has been gone nearly 40 years already.

This painting reminds me of those 17th century Dutch landscapes that I love so much. Flat land with big billowing clouds.

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