This piece has been underway for quite some time now and think sometimes I have the end vision “too much” in mind and that causes a stall for whatever reason- I really do not know. I have spent a lifetime teaching myself to allow for the unexpected and to set myself to find the unexpected in each work. After many decades I find I am still surprised if I let myself be. . . …

This cormorant piece started on a 18” x 36” wood panel as I have been trying to break from the square format for whatever reason- Not that I did not enjoy the direction of the piece, the composition, nor the mark making but a gut feeling kept me pushing this work to the back of the studio as I started countless new one. Then by chance a new paintings, through a series of “small studio/stacked pantings” situations, made the Cormorant piece whole and yes, a square again ;-) A bit more work and the screwing of the panels together then also brought me the dreaded question: To Frame or Not to Frame. . .. . .. . .

And Frame it was.

King Eider that is!

As I continue this series, “What the Birtds Told Me”, I am more and more becoming fascinated with the landscape,or lack of, that the solitary birds inhabit. I paint every morning starting at 3am and my winter studio is upstairs in the house where I use the kitchen sink to wash brushes and prepare coffee and tea. The window over the sink faces East and during the winter I can see the water from this perch high above Stockton Springs. the quality of light and the ever changing hues are insanely beautiful . . .. …… Our world is a beautiful one and even as we watch mankinds destruction of it, we should take time to look and listen to it, listen to what the birds are telling us- What they are warning us of.