Resisting the Call of the Couch, Red Wine and Netflix

I'm so glad I got back to our local drawing group last night. I haven't attended for a few months and have missed it. Sometimes after teaching on Tuesdays, the call of certain guilty pleasures is too great.

Amanda on Tuesday, 12x9, oil on panel, one hour sketch

It is always an adrenaline rush as we have only three 20 minute sessions with the model in one pose for the evening. These little sketches have to be completed in one hour.

5 minute gesture oil sketch, 6x8

We do several 2 minute gesture poses, then several 5 minute poses. I usually do the gesture poses with pencil but decided last night to start doing the 5 minutes poses with paint. I think that will help me slip into the paint sketching mode. There are so few lines in this that I'm surprised that it took 5 minutes, but I guess I did a lot of looking and not painting.

I like Ampersand gessobord and tone it with either burnt umber oil paint, Gamblin Fastematte or acrylic raw sienna depending on how early I prepare. The gesture sketch is on an un-stretched oil-primed linen that I will later mount on acid-free foam core.

I generally start the sketch with a line drawing, working directly with paint and move into a rub-out subtractive method of painting. I use a mixture thinned with a linseed oil/mineral spirits combo. Next I paint the shadow shapes and rub out the highlights with a T-Shirt scrap.

Next I move into color, working from the darks to the lights. I take my palette from home so I have some nice flesh tones pre-mixed from whatever is currently on the easel. That saves a lot of time for speed painting. There is never enough time so usually I try to focus on finishing one area, last night it was the area where the light was striking the model.

Our drawing group is called X's 8 (pronounced Times 8), it meets Tuesdays at Forstall Art Center in Birmingham, AL. 205 870-0480.

June 2012 American Art Collector's Article About the Eresman/Garcia Collection

I am so appreciative of my collectors. Their patronage and love of art allows me to do this crazy thing I do called painting.

In American Art Collector's June, 2012, issue there is an article about my new collectors, Committed to Collecting, Chip Eresman and Diana Garcia are dedicated to art and country. By Eric Christopher Cohler, Photography by Francis Smith. You may purchase it at any major bookstore.

It covers their journey to being collectors, the hows and whys of their collecting. Diana and Chip purchased The Three Fates at the recent Women Painting Women - The Expedition and Beyond at Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA.

Red Kimono by Mia Bergeron, (from the 2010 Women Painting Women Invitational)  and work by Martin Poole and Ray Donley

The Three Fates in it's new home in their dining room. Over the fireplace a Thomas Beuchner, and to the right Ray Donley

The Three Fates in it's new home in their dining room. Over the fireplace a Thomas Beuchner, and to the right Ray Donley

The Three Fates, 30x40, oil on panel.

I've been lucky enough to meet many of my collectors and have become friends with them. The similar life experiences we have shared, the things that inspired me to paint the work and inspired them to want to live with the work, are the experiences that make us friends. We just happened to have been introduced through the medium of my painting.


It's almost newsletter time, if you are not signed up but would like to be, you may do so clicking here. I send them out once a month. they are news of upcoming shows, teaching tips and sneak peeks at work fresh off the easel.


My work may be seen at Principle Gallery, in Alexandria VA, Sugarman-Peterson Gallery in Santa Fe, NM, and Miller Gallery in Cincinnati, OH.

Artist's Magazine's 2012 All Media Art Competiton

I'm happy to announce that my painting Ode To Melancholy has been awarded  an Honorable Mention and can be seen with all the winners in various categories such as watercolors, acrylics, pastels, graphite, charcoal and ink, colored pencil, mixed media and collage on their website.

Find details of the painting and inspiration about this painting at Ode to Melancholy, oil on panel, 24x36

The Grand Prize was Song, oil, 72x36, by Zoey Frank.

The first place in the oil and oil pastel category was Conversation by the Piano, oil, 25.5x17.5 by Nick Alm, from Sweden.

Ode to Melancholy may be viewed in person at Sugarman-Peterson Gallery in Santa Fe, NM.

Awesome Art Collectors and the Gallery Work-VS-Museum Work Debate

I am so appreciative of my collectors. Their patronage and love of art allows me to do this crazy thing I do called painting.

In American Art Collector's June, 2012, issue there is an article about my new collectors, Committed to Collecting, Chip Eresman and Diana Garcia are dedicated to art and country. By Eric Christopher Cohler, Photography by Francis Smith. You may purchase it at any major bookstore.

It covers their journey to being collectors, the hows and whys of their collecting. Diana and Chip purchased The Three Fates at the recent Women Painting Women - The Expedition and Beyond at Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA.

Red Kimono by Mia Bergeron, (from the 2010 Women Painting Women Invitational)  and work by Martin Poole and Ray Donley

The Three Fates in it's new home in their dining room. Over the fireplace a Thomas Beuchner, and to the right Ray Donley

Art by Jeffrey Johnson, Jorge Alberto, Larry Preston, Alejandro Rosemberg, Phillip Geiger, Martin Poole, Kevin Fitzgerald

This article brings up a subject I've been wanting to blog about for a while. "Do you make work for museums or galleries?" 

It's a debate I have never understood. I've heard artists say that they are not going the gallery route and that they instead paint museum quality work, as if it's an either, or, thing.

What!? Does that mean that artists that show in galleries are not producing museum quality work? Does that mean that if artists produce work for a gallery show they produce lesser work? Why is work made for private collections and work made for museums two different things?

There are two reasons why I think this is a harmful attitude for artists to have and a sign that the artist is buying into dysfunctional nonsense perpetuated by certain parts of the art world.

1. It may keep you from making the work you want to make.

I certainly expect that my work will be in museum collections, but museums or private collections, it makes no difference in my mind as to the kind of work I make. I paint what is provocative to me, making the best possible paintings I can. The trick is to find venues that do a great job connecting your work with savvy collectors, people who relate to the work, people that love the work enough to want to live with it.

On the practical side how much work of living artists do museums actually buy? Will you ever be able to support yourself and your work on museum sales? Is being a starving artist really a prerequisite to making high quality, provocative work? Not hardly!

Underlying this attitude is the idea that an artist that has financial success must not be making real work, meaningful work. Baloney!

2. The gallery work-vs-museum work question has an underlying condescending attitude toward collectors.

It doesn't give collectors any credit for knowing what is good art worth collecting. Should museum curators be the only ones getting to decide who is making good art? I don't think so.

My collectors really GET my work. They relate to it on an emotional and intellectual level. They are not seduced by technique or pretty colors that match their sofa. They GET art.

This gallery work-vs-museum work attitude by some is intimidating and may keep potential collectors out of galleries. How is that beneficial to artists or the art world?

I've been lucky enough to meet many of my collectors and have become friends with them. The similar life experiences we have shared, the things that inspired me to paint the work and inspired them to want to live with the work, are the experiences that make us friends. We just happened to have been introduced through the medium of my painting.

How sad for artists to miss out on these wonderfully rewarding relationships. All because of a dysfunctional attitude carried over from our art school days!

But as Dennis Miller says after one of his rants, I may be wrong.

If this is an interesting topic for you, you may find Tom Wolfe's book, The Painted Word, a good read. It explores many of these ideas about the dysfunctional nature of certain parts of the modern art era.

Incognito Project Back on the Easel

I'm so pleased to be back on this project.

My original idea for this model was a James Bond type character but he said his alter-ego was more of an outdoors man. In the true collaborative style of this project, together we came up with Hawkeye, the frontiersman scout/trapper, and character played by Daniel Day-Lewis in the movie, The Last of the Mohicans, 1992. It's a perfect fit for Jim.

He even has a similar look and what's not to love about that character!? He and Madeleine Stowe had amazing charisma.

The movie is based on the 5 books by James Fenimore Cooper, 1826, Leatherstocking Tales, and their sequel The Pathfinder.

While researching a title for the painting I came across a bit of trivia. In the MASH movie and TV series the character of Benjamin Franklin Pierce's father nicknamed him "Hawkeye" from The Last of the Mohicans.

I'm still debating titles, but I'm thinking The Pathfinder would be  a great fit. What do you think?

Read more about the Incognito Project beginning here.

Power Struggle Inspires

I received a fun email a couple weeks ago. My painting, Power Struggle, has been used by film student, Tami Ross at Savannah College of Art and Design as inspiration for a classroom assignment.

Tami wrote to me saying, "This quarter I am taking a lighting class and our first project was to take a painting that inspires us and re-create it with a little narrative. I used Power Struggle and wanted to share my short film with you."


I was so humbled to know that one of my painting inspired a student. I thought she did a great job creating her own narrative for the painting and recreating the lighting and casting.

Tami has a blog, My Mixed Media Life. I will try to follow her as she makes her way through the art world.

My daughter, Carly Strickland, wrote a paper when she went to SCAD about one of my paintings I did when I was in college. It was a fun essay for me to read about a painting that had been hanging in our house the entire time Carly was growing up.

In 2010 I was asked to do an interview with SCAD painting student Emily Tenebaum. Her assignment was a process where they analyze a body of work based on "ICU", Intensity, Complexity, and Unity. That is  great way to think about an artist's body of work. Emily was kind enough to let me post her essay when I wrote about the interview.

When I told Carly about the interview, she said, "Hey, I think I know that girl." Turns out she and Emily had a Women's Art Studies class together and they'd been talking about how much they each enjoyed William Bouguereau, not realizing that they also had a connection to me. Small world.

Remember if you are in the Alexandria, VA area stop in and see the Women Painting Women - The Expedition and Beyond at Principle Gallery, on display through mid-May.

You may see my work in Santa Fe at Sugarman-Peterson Gallery, and in Cinncinati, OH at Miller Gallery.