"Across the Pond"

6 x 8

I like this one. Just a farm pond, but a lot going on.

"Highway 50 Palms"

8 x 10

Where the St. Johns River percolates into a river in Central Florida there are seas of saw grass, and palm trees and islands of oak and cypress. Growing up we probably went to Orlando once a week and we passed over the St. Johns River on the way. I guess I've stared at this scene so many times that I love to paint it. It's miles and miles of the same thing, but its never the same thing.

"Spring Field"

8 x 10

Driving around North Florida and South Georgia this is a common site. Large tracts of land, one day they are fields of one thing and next day they are completely changed. They are a challenge to paint only because you have to do something to make them interesting and you need to come up with some way to convincingly showing depth. There are usually some wayward tire tracks heading out across the freshly plowed field and that makes a great lead-in to the painting. I've got to get better at this because I keep coming back to this subject. I like the image of change but at the same time permanence. "To everything thing . . . turn, turn . . . there is a season . . . turn, turn . . . and someone to paint it . . . ."

Florida Jungle Road

8 x 10

From a photo I took over in Jacksonville at a park on the north side near the ocean. The trick to this kind of painting is figuring out what to leave in and what to leave out. It's a jungle. There's stuff everywhere. If you painted every leaf and tree it would never end and the scene would be overwhelming. Here I just tried to suggest the palm fromes and the palm trees with a hint of a live oak branch making a canopy over the road. I think it works, but I'm bias.

Prayer Garden / Crestridge

11 x 14

This is from a photo I took during one of our trips to Crestridge. My girls love the place and have been going every summer since they were about 8. Crestridge is a girls summer camp in Ridgecrest, North Carolina. It's near Black Mountain, which is near Asheville. This is what they call the Prayer Garden. It's one of those cool, inviting, quiet places at the camp. I like the steps leading up to the garden. They lead your eye into the painting nicely. All the Crestridge fans keep telling me they want this painting.

St. Marks from the Flats

8 x 10

I just keep painting this lighthouse. Why is it that people like paintings of lighthouses? They are symbols we say. They steer us in the right path. This one is particularly difficult to paint sometimes because of the large live oak tree beside it. I'd like to see some old photos of this place when the live oak tree was tiny. Or was it there before the lighthouse? Anyone know?

New Year at the Refuge

9 X 12 (plein air)

Looking west from the refuge at the Indian River. On a beautiful day over new years break in Titusville. As I was painting this a bobcat walked across the sand near the foreground. Cool.