October

This is a small sketch from the parking lot at the Pincussion Mountain overlooking Lake Superior at Grand Marais. I like how you follow the colors down the shore till they fade to grey and your nice and sleepy and then there is another slash of color to wake you up. To be honest, I really felt more obliged than inspired to paint this scene, but once I got the sky in and some good color down on the canvas the power of the day started taking over. I felt pretty fortunate to have captured such and incredible day. About a week later, all these colors were gone.

Back Yard

This is a pretty typical scene in Grand Marais, MN. I painted this from the cozy interior of the Grand Marais Art Colony multi-purpose room during a painting work shop I was teaching (you're allowed a few comfortable witnter paintings a year). I'd go critque my students then come back and block in another section. If you are confused, its a trampoline at middle right.

Another painting that deals with scale. My friend Richard is painting in the bottom left corner of the image. Winter is a great time to paint these palisades on Clearwater Lake because you can get vantage points you normally can't when the lake is ice free. There was a road plowed up to this point and there were other trucks out on the lake, but we decided not to take an chance.

A friend was telling me a story of an ice fishing event that happened on this lake a number of years ago. There were so many cars on the ice that the ice started to sag and water starting shooting up through the holes that had been drilled.

Smoke'n Clouds

This is a studio painting composed from different sketches done along the north coast of Lake Superior. Scale is a huge part of living on the north shore. Things are massive sometimes and I wanted to give a sense of that with the boiling clouds against the little beach fire in the lower left part of the painting. I still need to add some one toasting 'mallows.

Winter at Clearwater Lake

My intentions this day were to hike to the top of this palisade and paint the view. Assuming that there would be a packed trail blazed to the top, I dispelled the need for snow shoes and left them at home. Of course there had been no visitors and the 4 feet of snow a the trail head stopped me in my tracks. Fortunately I had been struck by this scene earlier as I skied in so my efforts weren't in vain.