Redeemer Christian High School

Redeemer Christian High School was painted for a retirement gift for the principal. We had the guests at his retirement party sign the mat (frame) around the picture. The painting is a copy of the 'official' photo used in much of the school's promotional material, however, I added the students to the foreground. I used my son, Christopher, as a model for the person with the blue sweater since originally (in my pencil sketch) it was all girls sitting in front of the school and my sons did not think that that was fair.

Larose Forest

I was inspired to paint Larose Forest while cross country skiing. Larose Forest is located about a twenty minute drive from my house yet I had never been there in sixteen years of living here until last year (2007) fall when we went for a walk with a bunch of friends. I ended up walking there three times in the fall and skiing there three or four times during the winter. I guess you could say it was one of those hidden gems waiting to be discovered. What inspired me to paint this picture was the fact that I was surrounded by all the snow and evergreen trees when I suddenly came upon a tree with leaves still clinging tenaciously to its branches.

Geese

Geese is a subject that is very much a part of my year. Both in the spring and in the fall we get large flocks of geese flying over our house. The sound of the geese in spring is a very joyful and celebratory greeting but in the fall it becomes a rather melancholy farewell. This particular scene can be seen from our front veranda. This was a study on painting clouds. I had actually thrown these cloud painting attempts away but then decided to see what would happen if I painted a scene with the clouds...

Winter Barn 2

One Saturday I found myself home alone so I decided to spend the day painting. In those few hours I actually made three small paintings!

Winter Barn 1

Winter Barn 1 & 2 are scenes that I see out of my back windows. These actually started as cloud studies and so as not to waste paper I decided to paint a quick little scene once the sky was dry. These two little paintings are among my favorites.

Abandoned Barns

Abandoned Barns was an exercise in perspective. It is a copy of a painting in one of my books. I feel that this painting helped me to go to another level in my abilities. Besides practicing different kinds of perspective, I also experimented with colors, color mixing and painting in layers. I was so pleased with my results that I had Abandoned Barns printed and made into my annual Christmas card in 2007.

Winter Trees

Winter Trees was an exercise in perspective from one of my Watercolor instruction books. I found that I really enjoyed painting trees while doing this particular painting.

Chinese Lantern

I bought a couple of instruction books for watercolor painting. Chinese Lantern is one of the exercises in the book. Here I was learning about light and how it affects the objects around it.

Red Currents

There are several red current bushes in my backyard which need to be harvested at the beginning to mid July. This is a big job but the Red Current Jelly is so yummy! One year I decided to do a photo scrapbook page documenting the steps involved from transforming the currents on the bush to the jelly in the jar. The photo of the currents on the bush just begged to be painted. This is the only painting that I have done so far in which I experimented with watercolor pencils.

Daisy

Daisy is the third painting of a series where I progressively zoomed in on the subject. This was one of my first paintings in thirteen years. I was quite encouraged with the results.

Apple Blossoms

Apple Blossoms was painted using a photo of our apple trees in the yard. The reason for the small painting size is that I had heard that it was quite trendy to bid for and buy small paintings (2.5" X 3.5") on the internet so I painted a few and hoped to make my millions. There was one problem, however; I liked my paintings too much so I didn't want to sell them! I eventually gave Apple Blossoms away as a birthday card to my Father-in-law who also had several apple trees.