thinking & making

  • Wisconsin Waterfall

    Wisconsin Waterfall

    Last night I found a couple of old paintings from 2002, and I had the overwhelming urge to paint over one of them.

  • Flood Reflections at Rutherford-Sayre Park, Chicago

    Flood Reflections at Rutherford-Sayre Park, Chicago

    I finished this painting and I’m feeling pretty good about it. The goal was to paint 2 foot square acrylic version of the very small gouache painting I made last year (below), using only the painting as a reference rather than the original photo reference.

  • Setting aside “Balance” in favor of self-awareness

    Setting aside “Balance” in favor of self-awareness

    I’ve decided that I’m going to blow up my freshly created 2020 goals, and tighten them up so that this year I strive for immersive/passionate focus into just a couple of things, rather than pushing a number of larger goals forward incrementally.

  • What am I trying to achieve?

    As I was reflecting on the work I’m doing right now and my painting plans for this year, I became very certain that my primary goal is this: I want to learn to make mid-scale acrylic landscape paintings with a process and outcome that represent my sensibility. The most important thing about framing the goal…

  • Getting to the home stretch

    Getting to the home stretch

  • 15 from 2019

    15 from 2019

    I’ve put together another installment of my year-end favorite song mixes – this time it’s “15 songs from 2019.” There are a lot of really special songs that didn’t make the mix this year. I listened far and wide in 2019, but ultimately spent most of my time with several AMAZING records that came out…

  • Tree woes

    Tree woes

    One of the challenges in making this painting based upon the 7x7cm landscape I painted is that there are times when I need to use my imagination to add detail in service of the painting, rather than solely base my painting from the small source. I went into this tree with some measure of caution,…

  • Painting doodles

    Painting doodles

  • Bring in the lights

    Bring in the lights