A lot going on in my head

It's been almost 3 months since my last post. Things have been pretty crazy around here. Good news is we put our house on the market and sold it. We have also found a great house that we are moving into on November 15th. I will now have a true studio to work in. My current studio is small and has no heat or air. So it makes working in the middle of summer and winter tough. The new studio is in the main house and is considerably larger. So I'm really excited to get in there and start working.

Unfortunately I haven't been feeling well for the past 3 months. While working on my last painting I started to develop dizziness. I went to the doctor and he performed a number of blood test which all came back fine. After a few more weeks of feeling light headed he did more test which also came back normal. About this time I started to hear a whooshing sound in my right ear. So I was referred to an ear, nose and throat doctor to check out the cause of the tinnitus in my ear. After several test he determined that there was something pushing on the nerve that leads from the ear to the brain. He ordered a MRI of my brain which showed a 1 inch glomus tumor that is putting pressure on my jugular vein and is restricting the blood flow. That is what has caused the dizziness and the whooshing sound in my ear. Thankfully it is not cancerous. The doctor said that it is slow growing and has probably been there for about five years. The next step is to have it removed within the next few months. The surgery will be pretty extensive (6-8 hrs) and require 3 different surgeons working as a team to remove. If all goes well I should be back to myself within 6 weeks.

With all of this going on I just haven't had much motivation to paint. But that is starting to change and I'm getting the bug again to start something. I have several paintings in my mind that I want to start so to keep me occupied I might begin drawing out the next piece. I'll post up progress once I get it started.

Uncorked

Uncorked
9"x12" Oil on panel

I finally finished this commission piece a few days ago and it only took me five months to complete. Jeez I'm slow! This was a fun piece to work on though. It was quite challenging at times, but I learned a lot on this one and I have conquered my fear of painting letters.

Now that it is done I'm looking forward to starting something new, but it will have to wait a few weekends as my wife and I are putting our house on the market. So I'll be busy preparing for that. Hopefully sometime soon I'll be painting in a new studio.

A Week in Seabrook Island

My family and I just got back from a much needed week at the beach in Seabrook Island, SC. This was our first time to stay on the island and it was a blast. This was also our daughter's first trip to the beach so it was a lot of fun watching her experience everything for the first time. We had a lot of time to relax and play with the kids.

In my downtime I put the new camera through it's paces capturing tons of reference material for potential paintings. The shot above was taken just after sunrise on the morning we left. It was hard to leave after such a great week.

I also got a chance to break away one afternoon for a few hours and visited the M Gallery of Fine Art and the Robert Lange Studios in Charleston. I was able to see some amazing work on display by Sadie Valeri, David Gluck, Robert Liberace, Amy Lind, Ali Cavanaugh, Robert Lange, and tons more. Truly inspiring.

New Camera

I just got a new camera (Nikon D90) that has HD video capabilities. So I decided to record a little bit of video and test it out. I threw this together in iMovie pretty quickly. This was my first time using the program so it's pretty rough.

In Progress Still Life

I just finished painting the first layer of the corkscrew this morning. Above is a detail shot of where I finished up. There are a few spots that have sunk in since I haven't oiled this out yet, but I wanted to go ahead and post up a shot of the progress. I will move on to painting the cork tomorrow.

In Progress Still Life

Untitled
9"x12" Oil on panel

It seems more often than not I start my posts off with "It's been awhile" or "Progress has been slow". I'm sorry to say that is the case once again. Work has been in full swing recently, requiring me to often work nights, weekends and even a holiday recently.

In hopes of gaining more studio time I recently started waking up early to paint before I leave for work. So far this has worked out well. I get about two hours in and on a good day I can also paint in the evening for a few hours. I hope this will help boost my production time a bit.

Now on to the painting. I'm currently working on the screw pull. The first pass should be done after another morning session or two. Since my last post I've painted in the first layer of the table. Right now it's flat and monochromatic. But once I have added in the details (reflections, scratches, wood grain, etc...) it should have a good bit of character. I've also left the bottom of the glass unfinished so I could have painted table around it to paint into. I'll move back into that section once the screw pull is done.

The Artist’s Magazine‘s 2011 All-Media Art Competition

I am happy to announce that my painting "Glass Jar with Rag" received an honorable mention in the Artist's Magazine's 2011 All-Media art competition.

Click here to view the winners and honorable mentions.