Monday, March 30, 2015

Paintings at ACCI Gallery, Berkeley


ACCI Gallery In Berkeley, is currently displaying some of my work -  The gallery is looking beautiful, and the new sculpture garden in the back is a lovely asset, especially in balmy spring weather.

From left to right, my gouache painting "Garden Reflection", a small giclee of my gouache painting "Dusk", oil on panel "Planting Oaks" in an antique gilt frame, "Multnomah Falls" in a wonderful Tramp Art frame from about 1900, and a small oil I did of "Maine Rowboats", aesthetically moored at the end of Mount Desert Island when we visited in the Fall of 2013.

I am now on Instagram, as is ACCI, and the gallery posted a picture they took of my rowboat painting, along with many other examples of their exhibited artists' work.  I am attaching a screen shot of the Instagram posting below, but you can also go to Instagram and see more of my artwork at #manopantheart or at #accigallery to see my pieces, and the work of many other artists represented by the gallery.

Display of a group of my paintings at ACCI Gallery, Berkeley


Instagram posting featuring "Maine Rowboats" at ACCI Gallery

Sunday, March 22, 2015

Mount Diablo, oil on canvas


Mount Diablo

In late fall I began a commission to paint Mount Diablo, in central Contra Costa County, for a client and friend who sees this view from her bedroom window in Alamo.  She may be moving to southern California in the next year or so, and wants to "take the view with her".  This is a pretty big painting for me, at 24" x 30", and the huge mountain looms so close to the house that it was a challenge to really get the scale of the thing.  The near foreground was not quite as arboreal as it appears here - the view was filled with her neighbors' houses, driveways, and recycling bins, and when I drove out to do my on-site sketches, clouds covered the top ridge, creating another problem for me.  (A day or two later the sky cleared and the client sent me a photograph of the top of the mountain so I could fill in the blank in my drawings...)

I decided that to make the mountain look Really Big, it needed to be bathed in late afternoon sunlight, the clouds above it retreating in perspective, and the foreground had to be in deeper shadow to make the composition more dramatic. I eliminated the houses between me and the closest foothills (while keeping a few of their trees and shrubs) to keep the view pristine and powerful.

All of this is a demonstration of how artists can paint the truth without necessarily painting exactly what they see!