January 2021

 

Mellow

18" by 18" by 1.5"

Acrylic on Gallery-wrapped Canvas with 1" white border

  Well here we are, one month into 2021, and still hiding out at home!

January, obviously, got off to a shaky start with upsetting things in the news. I don't know if that was a factor weighing on my mind, or if I just needed a break, but I found myself struggling with the paintings I was working on. Melissa reminded me that every time I've taken some time away from the easel, I've come back to it refreshed and my work seems to take a leap forward. 

So I ended up taking two weeks off, during which I read several of the Martha's Vineyard mysteries by Philip Craig. They are a lot of fun, and the best part is there are 19 of them, so put them on your list of Books to Read During a Pandemic.

I also spent some time studying the techniques of other artists, either by reading their articles or watching online videos. I like hearing what they have to say about their thought processes and approaches. It's a good way to relax my overactive mind and get inspired by what other people do.

This month, we've also been trying to get in line for the vaccine, like everyone else. Here in Florida, it's being distributed through the Publix supermarket chain. But, like everywhere else, the supply is limited and the demand great. So every Wednesday and Friday morning, Melissa has been getting up in the wee hours (we've also been watching the series, Shetland, so I've developed a Scottish accent and picked up the vocabulary), so as to be on the website when it goes live at 6 a.m. This past week she got lucky, and was able to get me an appointment. I had my first dose on Friday, and haven't experienced much in the way of side effects - just a little bit of fever and shivering in the night that didn't last long. 

So, one shot down and one to go - I am half-safe!

The time off definitely reinvigorated my painting, because when I returned to my easel, it felt great  and I created some pieces that I love. One of my earlier problems was that I was working small, and the truth is that I just don't like that as well, and I think it's more difficult with the Parkinson's. I much prefer the big canvases, or 18" by 24" sheets, where I can take great sweeps with the palette knife. It feels much freer and is a lot more fun!

Lazy Hazy Daze

18" by 24"

Acrylic on Heavy Linen Paper

If I had the space, I'd work on really big canvases - three feet by four feet! 

I'm phasing out my JRSecorFineArt.com page over at FASO, because it's easier to post my work in just one place, and I can do that here on this blog. We've created "Pages" which are essentially "collections" of paintings in the different categories in which I work. If you look up above this post and just below the blog heading, you'll see Home, Seascapes, Southwest Landscapes, , Mindscapes, and Still Life. 

By clicking on a heading, it will take you to that collection page. 

Instead of putting all my January paintings into this post, I've shown you just a couple, and invite to you to please look at the new Page Galleries. My most recent paintings appear first on the pages. This month, most of my paintings were Seascapes, so start there!

Ocean Blues

10" by 20" by 1.5"

Acrylic on Gallery-wrapped Canvas

with 1" white border

If there is something you like enough to want to make it yours, send me an email at rvpainter@gmail.com and we can exchange details. I take check, Paypal or Venmo.

As always, thank you for stopping by and taking the time to read my post and look at my art. 

JR

December 2020 Blog Post

 Hello Everyone!

Well, collectively, we have made to the end of 2020! 

In the past 10 months, I have been inside the bubble of our home and car, except for two trips to the beach, where we were able to sit far from anyone else and enjoy the sun and surf. I know we all hope that 2021 will bring us a return to the simple pleasures of life that we may previously have taken for granted. I don't think we ever will again!

I have noticed physical changes from my Parkinson's this year that affected my painting. The main problem I encountered was that, if I tried to back up to look at a painting I was working on, I felt myself falling backwards. Apparently this is common, and my doctor even told me that one of his patients wears a bike helmet around the house because this happens to her so often!

The problem is that I have been painting standing up for 25 years, so having to adapt to painting while sitting in a chair had some challenges. The main issue is that it is harder for me to take the broad sweeps with my palette knife that I could take when standing, and this feels awkward and inhibiting. I felt as though I couldn't achieve the same looseness of style. For a while, I stopped using the palette knife and took up the brush, but this felt very constricting and not at all like ME.

I also had times when my mind would freeze so that, afterward, I had no memory at all of creating the painting! 

So that was weird.

The chair has definitely solved the problem of falling backwards, though I have occasionally fallen a few times getting up out of the chair! It's taken some time, but I feel like I've been able to adapt to the set-up so that I can move my arm freely, and so I've returned to using the palette knife.

I took some time off from painting in December, but look forward to getting back to my easel in January. 

Below are two paintings I created in December.

I hope you folks have a happy, healthy and prosperous 2021, and that the weight of the pandemic will lift off our shoulders sooner rather than later. 

Thank you for following and supporting my artistic ventures - Happy New Year!

J.R. 

Autumn Setting In 

12" by 9" on Heavy Linen Paper

$65

Sunset, Gulf of Mexico

12" by 16" on Linen Canvas Panel

$125

 

Golden Wetlands Sunset

9" by 12"

Well, November is over - another month of staying home gone by! 

Melissa and I are generally happy at home, but what I miss the most are simple pleasures, like being able to go out to breakfast or lunch at our favorite places. Still, it's a small price to pay for staying safe and keeping others safe too.

Most of my mornings are spent painting or doing other things art-related. In the afternoons I read books on my Kindle and nap. Melissa introduced me to the Philip Craig Martha's Vineyard mysteries, of which there are 19 books in the series, and I'm on number seven, so they will keep me busy a while longer! Our weather has improved - we are out of the sultry heat and hurricane season,  and enjoying a few cold spells that make for lovely afternoons in the sun on our lanai. All in all, I would say I have a pretty nice life and I am grateful!

Here I am enjoying the sunshine on our lanai:

Folks often ask how I go about starting a painting, so I'll tell you how that happens. 

Most of the time, I work from photos and my imagination to create what I call "Mindscapes." These are visions in my head from memory of real places, with the addition of my imagination in the areas of color and mood. So, the scene may depict a real place, but it is not necessarily that place at a real moment in time, depicting the exact color of the sky or shadows, or even the season. I adjust based on what I am feeling when I take brush to paper or canvas. To me, art is all about emotion - exact replications of a scene are for cameras, not paint brushes!

We lived in the southwest U.S. for 12 years, so many of my visions are from there. The magnificent landscape is burned into my memory, so no photos are required! This one, "Purple Clouds Make Purple Shadows," is a good example of a Mindscape - the landscape is a real place, but my goal was to play around with the impact of using the color purple in the sky and in shadows on the ground.

Purple Clouds Make Purple Shadows

My New England ocean scenes come from memories of our life on the coast of Maine, where we lived for 20 years - first in York Beach and later in East Boothbay. I just finished the one below, "Lighthouse on the Bluff." 

Drawing is not my strong suit, so I do what can be called "loose sketching" to get started. I don't use a pencil; I use a long-handled paintbrush and dark paint! Sometimes I just place directional lines to indicate the flow of the landscape. In this painting, I sketched in the buildings in a fairly sloppy manner, using the brush. Once I had the shapes, I just started painting, adjusting the scene as needed.

Lighthouse on the Bluff

9" by 12"

A painting has three areas to be reckoned with: the background, midground and foreground. I always being with the background first, which is the sky and anything else above the horizon line. Then I move to the midground and end with the foreground.

Below are a few more samples of my work in November. My main site is at JRSecorFineArt.com, where you can view more of my work, organized into collections such as landscape, seascape, and still life. The paintings shown on the blog are all for sale, so email me at rvpainter@gmail.com if you are interested in any of them.

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas, Joyous Holiday Season and a Happy New Year. 

Warm regards,

JR

        

October 2020

 

  

                         Morning Surf                     Across the                         Across to the

                                                                   Galisteo Basin                      Mangrove

Hello!

This weird year marches on...October has passed and it's November first. Melissa told me that, in Celtic tradition, today marks the beginning of the new year. So Happy New Year, everyone! Ordinarily, we don't like wishing time away, but I think we are all about done with 2020!

I'll be celebrating the New Year (the Celtic one) with a fall-into-holidays sale that I'm calling, "Small Paintings at Small Prices." 

These will be 8" by 8" to 14" by 11" paintings on linen canvas panels that can either be framed or displayed on easels without framing. Prices will be $40 to $60 (plus tax and shipping of about $15 in the U.S.). Purchasing two or more paintings will earn you a 20% discount (and shipping does not necessarily increase - unless of course you buy lots of paintings!) 

In October, I experienced some disconcertingly weird days with my Parkinson's. My mind and my painting arm just didn't feel connected or coordinated. It's a strange feeling. 

Sometimes the result of my painting session on those days was frustration, disappointment and fear of what may be happening. Other times, the result was a painting that came out  unexpectedly well! 

I've also been adapting to painting sitting down, which is helpful for keeping me from falling over backwards, but inhibits my ability to freely swing my arm while painting. So, I am learning to adapt and just continue to show up at my easel and see what happens - one day at time. 

Here are some of my October works, which are part of the Small Paintings at Small Prices Sale.  If you follow Melissa on Facebook, you will see these and others posted throughout November and December. If you don't follow her on Facebook, but would like to see additional paintings, (believe me, I have more!!) please email me at rvpainter@gmail.com.

Thank you for stopping by and taking the time to look at my work.  Don't forget to stop by my website, JRSecorFineArt.com, where you can see and directly purchase my work. 

 

OCTOBER PAINTINGS

Path to the Moutains

8" by 8" on linen canvas panel

$40 plus tax and shipping U.S.

Path to the Mountains

on easel

Magenta Sunset

10" by 10" on linen canvas panel 

$45 plus tax and shipping U.S.

Magenta Sunset 

displayed on Easel

High Country Winter

10" by 10" on linen canvas panel

$45 plus tax and shipping U.S. 

High Country Winter

displayed on easel

AND A FEW SAMPLES FROM 

THE UPCOMING SALE:

Group I

12" by 12" on linen canvas panel

$50 plus tax and shipping U.S.

Calm Surf

New Mexico Aspens

Path to the Sea

Group II

10" by 10" on linen canvas panel

$45 plus tax and shipping U.S.

Into the Woods

Sedona Blue

Sunset Reflections

Group III

Still Life Paintings

These are a wee bit bigger at 14" by 11"

$60 plus tax and shipping U.S.

Antique Pewter Coffee Pitcher

Native American Pottery

Pitcher with Bowl

THANKS FOR STOPPING BY!

SEE YOU NEXT MONTH!

September Blog Post

This Land is My Land

Hello Everyone!

Well, we've made it through six full months of quarantine - I know some of you may have been in it even longer than that. With the end of September came some welcome relief from the heat. The last few days have been overcast but with pleasant temperatures that make it possible to sit outside for most of the day. It reminds me that nothing lasts forever - not the humid heat of summer in Florida and not Covid. It will end eventually and we'll all feel lighter.

In the meantime, I keep busy by painting. I watch a lot of videos put out by other artists to see their techniques and hear their tips. It can be very interesting! Some months I focus on exploring a new technique or style, but this month, I just painted whatever came to me when I showed up in front of my easel. 

I have always painted standing up, but have been having episodes of feeling like I'm falling backwards, particularly if I take a small step back to get perspective on my painting. This is a common symptom of Parkinson's. It's pretty scary though, and I find that I catch myself from falling at least a few times during each painting session. So, we bought me a chair and lowered the shelves of my set-up so that I can paint sitting down. It's taken a little getting used to in terms of how I swing my arm when I paint, but it feels MUCH safer. Here's the new set-up:

I added several pieces to my sales website at JR Secor Fine Art, so please pop over there via the link to check that out. Here are some pieces I did in September that aren't on that site, but of course all are available, and all one need do is ask! You can see that it's a pretty eclectic collection - I've got southwest landscapes, seascapes, and the last one just might have been influenced by the show Yellowstone, which Melissa and I have been enjoying this summer.

Bear Mountain Trail, Sedona, Arizona

Saugaro Sunset

Shore Breezes

Taos Sundown

Visions of Yellowstone

As always, thanks for stopping by and taking the time to read my words and look at my art. Stay safe and well!

JR

 

August Post

Stormy Night, New Mexico

Well, here we are at the end of August, and I think this 2020 calendar meme pretty much sums things up, don't you?

Anyway, we've been hunkered down for 5 full months now, and while we are grateful to be safe at home, the isolation and constraint definitely get to us sometimes. Really, we'd just like to be able to go to a favorite breakfast place. It's even too hot to go to the beach down here right now. But fall is around the corner, so we will take a deep breath and carry on.

How do I cope? I think you know the answer to that! I paint! I had a pretty busy and successful painting month. I've continued to create what I call Mindscapes - landscapes that represent places I've seen, but are not specific places. They are meant to capture a mood, or the feeling of such places. Sometimes after I've painted these, I don't actually remember doing it....

Toward the end of the month I got into a Purple Phase - for some reason I was drawn to incorporating shades of purple, and boy, I think that worked out pretty well! The first painting at the top of the post is the most extreme outcome of this exploration - most are more subtle. 

And the other thing I did was some studies in shades of gray, which create a Black and White study effect. Those two are at the very end.

As always, you can check out my work for sale with sizes and prices at JRSecorFineArt.com.

Here you go - check my month's efforts out below:

Mindscapes

Dusk Settling In

Morning Marshland

Wetlands

Ocean/Seascapes:

Rise and Shine

Low Tide

As the Day Ends

Southwest Landscapes

Cathedral Rock, Backside

Monument Valley, Beyond the Mittens

View of Cathedral Rock from

Red Rock Crossing

Shades of Gray

Shades of Gray III

Shades of Gray IV

Hang in there everyone! I'll see you at the end of September.