This afternoon I drove to the family ranch to enjoy a social distancing mother’s day BBQ. Emerging from self isolation I found just seeing family in person to be a great joy. After lunch I stood off to the side drinking a cold ale and painted our rickety old barn. How this pile of dry fuel wrapped in a thick blanket of kindling survived the Kincaid fires is a mystery to us all.
After a twenty year dry spell I’ve started painting in oil again. For a brief time in college I gave it a go but life on the road made it an impractical medium for me. Instead I spent the last twenty years with my nose to a computer. Over the last few months I’ve fallen in love with the medium again. It’s both a struggle and a joy remembering how to use it. I never had any formal training in oil so I’m I’m starting from scratch. I’ve been watching YouTube videos on everything from brush care to oiling out canvas. I’m having a great time. I love all the added complexities oil painting brings.
I painted this ArtRage painting on my iPad at B.C. Womans hospital while my wife was in labor with our twin sons Wiley and Rudie. I won’t ever forget when or where I was when I made this painting!
It was near midnight and I was in the cement bunker like basement of the hospital. My heart was racing and I was terribly exhausted and anxious. To distract myself and pass the hours more quickly I sat in the lobby of the delivery room and painted this far off peaceful place.