July 18

I can’t believe it is already Thursday and I can’t believe I didn’t think about painting in oils earlier so they would dry a bit before I fly home. What the heck. I am here to enjoy moving paint around in a new landscape.

Looking at sticks all week, I find myself seeing blocks of color up and down the road. I am expanding my dairy cow theme here today. I make some marks, wait for it to dry a bit and then continue. Started this one today.

It was a rather chilly misty day. Polo, my pal and I took a break, threw sticks in the water and then came back and I worked on my cow study. He made himself a bed out of a piece of plastic on the floor. Shivering from the dampness, I covered him with my coat. A lovely afternoon working in the studio.

I was planning on channeling the painter William Crozier today but I seem to be calling up the French painter Nicholas DeStael with my square blocks of color. Those little sticks are really changing how I see.

Nicholas DeStael: https://www.wikiart.org/en/nicolas-de-sta-l

(I am not highlighting their work in the blog to avoid any copyright issues - hope you will look at their work.)

Here are some of the cows I walk past daily.

I have done all I plan to do on this work for now. I doesn’t look like my work at all. HA. I debated whether to put in the hills. I think I like the reference of the blue mark in the first one—just a suggestion of their surrounding. It’s clear I am thinking too much. Need to get back to spontaneity in my mark marking, Back to Bill Evans jazz in my ear.

I have more orange squares to play with tomorrow.