Wooden Form for Cod Auction 2025

Last weekend I drove over to Marblehead to pick up my wooden form to decorate for the annual Cod Auction to benefit Marblehead Festival of Art. Everyone starts with the same form.  This year, all the codfish forms had sticky tags to make sure that all the finished fish face the same direction.  I have been trying to figure out what to do this year.  Some years back, I created a fish decorated with Portuguese tile pattern.  I am thinking of doing that again. . .same idea but different design.

Prison Bars and Roses (Scarlet Letter project), painting as of March 8, 2025

Here is my painting as it looked on March 8th, the day I finally began to put brush to canvas. This is for a special event in Salem honoring Nathanial Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter.")  The text is a quotation from the novel, supplied below.*  The imagery I am using comes from a quotation from the novel (see below), with Hawthorne's words  written on prison bars, and wild rose branches seen through the bars, suggesting the famous letter A that is so important in the novel.  This part of the project is pretty tedious: laying out the lettering to make sure everything will fit.  As I began with my rough pencil sketch on canvas, I was uncertaiin of the color scheme.  I tried a transparent layer of light Paine's grey, just so I could still see the pencil sketch.  As I worked, I made my decision: pale grey for the background (prison bars) and dark grey for the lettering.). I was happy with the contrast and the general placement. 

Here is the quotation from Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter::

"But on one side of the portal and rooted almost at the threshold was a wild rose bush covered, this month of June, with its delicate gems which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom in token that the deep heart of Nature would pity and be kind to him."

Prison Bars and Roses (Scarlet Letter project), sketch on canvas

On March 7th, I began working out the layout for this painting.  (This is for a special event in honor of Nathanial Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter.")  I am using a quotation* from the novel, written on the prison bars, with the wild rose suggesting the famous letter A in the background.  I had already made a sketch (posted here on March  5th). From there,  I worked out the basic layout on  10" x 10" graph paper to get the proportions and measurement right, and then finally sketched out the layout on the canvas in pencil.  This part isn't fun, and the resulting sketch is not pretty, but all this necessary to produce a good result. To be continued. . .

*"But on one side of the portal and rooted almost at the threshold was a wild rose bush covered, this month of June, with its delicate gems which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom in token that the deep heart of Nature would pity and be kind to him."

Reposting: Spring at Kelleher Pond, delivered to art show

This is my painting of Kelleher Pond in spring. I painted this with a combination of acrylic and oil bar.  This is one of two paintings that I delivered to Boston on Monday.  (The second painting is "First of May at Long Hill, recently reposted here Feb 5th)  These will both be on display in a show titled "Chromatic Currents" at The Art Gallery TAG.   

Prison Bars and Roses (Sketch for painting)

I made this sketch today (with Sharpies on paper), trying to formulate my idea for a painting.  This is for an upcoming show in Salem, of paintings inspired by Hawthorne's novel, "The Scarlet Letter."  My plan is for the background to be sky blue, and I would try to use gray for the bars (to suggest prison) with lettering in gold. This is the third of the three sketches that it took to get this far.  The text is "But on one side of the portal and rooted almost at the threshold was a wild rose bush covered, this month of June, with its delicate gems which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom in token that the deep heart of Nature would pity and be kind to  him."