Yellow Rising...combining realistic painting with patterning

Yellow Rising   watercolor   27.5 x 15

is the painting that resulted from our watercolor class challenge of architectural detail.  I do love houses...especially old ones.  In this case, I chose a view of a home just up the street, featuring only the part of that home that I enjoyed the most...the windows.  Painting objects in their entirety along with their surrounds (i.e. gardens, walkways, backgrounds) is not nearly as appealing to me.  For me, more forms in the work diminish the power of each and every form.  This approach reflects my current aesthetic of simplicity.  On a whim, I chose to embellish the work with with a detail from a salvaged piece that hangs in our home with, I believe, a carving that would have appeared in a home of about the same age.  I began with a sketch that guided the movement around the page and followed it closely during the painting process.  I am satisfied....

....for the moment.

Then it follows that the windows are the soul of the home

Fenetre   oil/canvas board   8 x 8
It has been said the eyes are the windows of the soul.  Attributed perhaps to Shakespeare or Leonardo.


The eye is the window of the soul, the mouth the door. The intellect, the will, are seen in the eye; the emotions, sensibilities, and affections, in the mouth. The animals look for man's intentions right into his eyes. Even a rat, when you hunt him and bring him to bay, looks you in the eye. Hiram Powers, American sculptor (1805 - 1873)


The window is the twixt-tween between the interior and the exterior, the entrance or the exit.  The yin and the yang.  We are either outside looking in, or inside looking out.  Simple yet profound.  While wandering on the grounds of the John Brown home in Hudson, I came upon this small window in one of the out buildings.  The lace curtain told me a bit about the owner.  The window itself reflected the warm green of the surrounds.  The shutters hung imperfectly.  This simple image is very beautiful to me.  Stream of consciousness might have something to do with it as I have spent several summer weekends re-painting the shutters of our own 150-year-old dwelling.  Those same shutters.  Constructed from wood.  Hand-doweled together.  Layers of paint telling the story of many updates.  Genius in fact.  As I scrape and paint, I think about how long it took just to make one shutter.  Patience.  Endurance.  Part of the Past yet living in the present.  So many stories.  It was my own story, I think, that connected me to this one.

Open your eyes.....or windows

Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in.

Fenetre   oil/canvas board   8 x 8

Alan Alda

I have always loved the spiritual quality of windows and doors. That follows my natural inclination to personify inanimate objects, such as houses and cars. What child hasn't made a face with windows and doors on house drawings? Perhaps I saw Fantasia one too many times. Whatever. In the feng shui world of harmony, windows and doors are key ingredients to creating a harmonic interplay between the indoors and out. In my painting world, I try to create harmony between the subject and its background, or counter-space, by creating "windows" or openings between them to ease those transitions. In other words, I don't much enjoy too many hard edges. Andrew Wyeth's windows make us, the viewers, into voyeurs. His windows and doors have a mystical quality. The home of first place Team Germany in this year's solar decathalon had few, if any, windows. Good for net energy. Bad for feng shui.

Today begins my annual CLEANING OF THE WINDOWS....not an easy task in this old house of 6 over 6 panes in each one. It is fulfilling, however. I like the reflective quality of clean glass during the dark season. I plan to challenge my assumptions as I work.

Windows to the Soul

Morning Balcony   watercolor   20 x 10.5

For as long as I can remember, I have ascribed human characteristics to buildings. Maybe everyone does. Maybe I have an overactive imagination. Maybe Disney movies have been permanently cemented in my brain. Fantasia, etc. Brooms that dance and doors that converse. Maybe that explains my fascination with windows, doors and rooftops, second only to my love of painting the human figure. I guess they could be hair, eyes and mouths. Whoaaaa.............whatever. The neighborhoods we live in tend to be fairly homogenous. And the dwellings we live in seem to be regionally homogenous as well. Visiting other areas of our vast country or other countries gives us a welcome new perspective. We discover differences that are beautiful as well as functional. Two of my sons live in San Francisco where the weather is perpetually mild. There are no air-conditioners hanging from windows and no need for storm windows and doors. The beauty of these structures is more apparent, more visible. "Morning Balcony" is just one example. I look forward to doing more.