A Cottage Called Al-Fred, 9x12 oil

SOLD

This little gem of a cottage is on Cape Cod, and my friends and I paint there a couple of times a year with my dear friend Joan Brancale, who is a fabulous painter. (She's been featured in magazines, and her art has been advertised in American Art Collector). This painting started out as a plein air painting, and I worked on it in the studio to fine tune it a little bit. I love the feeling of crispness of the air, when I look at it I can smell the salt water off to the left. I wanted to sit on those red adirondak chairs and watch the water!

Oh, and we were so curious as to the whole 'Al-Fred' sign - turns out that the couple is something like Aline and Fred, hence Al-Fred, :)

September at the Snack Shack, Oil, 11x14

Today I painted at Horseneck Beach in Westport, MA. There were litereally less than a dozen people there, although it was a gorgeous day. It seems so barren and forlorn, with the empty parking lot and the deserted snack and changing area. I loved all the picnic tables piled up against the back of the Snack Shack, and the pay phone. While I was painting I thought... geez, it seems everyone has a cell phone today, I wonder if they really need that.... and just as I was packing up a woman rode up to it on her bike and made a bunch of phone calls.... although WHERE she was riding from, and how she knew there'd be a phone there is kind of mysterious.... Anyway this was painted on pastel board - what do I know? I thought it would just be a lovely ground, but the board sucked up all the liquid from the paint as soon as it touched - made for VERY tough painting! It was wrestling the whole time, and between that and my two tubes of dried out Permalba White Paint... well, it made me question the joy of Oil Painting quite a number of times.... Off to Utrecht tomorrow, I promise myself!