RMW Ramblings

  FALL: PUMPKINS AND GOURDS Fall began with the autumnal equinox a few minutes ago.  We now have a pumpkin and gourd arrangement in a rustic carved wood basket on the dining room table.   And here's an earlier ciaroscuro painting, October Gold:    

  Cranes in the Mist The graceful stature and stately movement of sand hill cranes belies their raucous report. I spotted a group on the lawn at Maura and Bill's house on a visit to them in Florida in pre-Covid days. Bill cultivated orchids in the niches and crotches of their trees, so I added a reference grouping on my painting, "Cranes in the Mist."   Here is a phone pic of the noisy cranes on the lawn.  In the painting I fabricated the mist.        

  High and Mighty In a Havre-de-Grace antique shop I saw two different quirky items which caught my interest.  As I frequently do, I snapped pictures to put in my digital photo file of odd and intriguing things I have spotted.  First I saw this egg cup...   And in another booth, this novelty child's cap...   That should have been the end of it, but they kept churning in my mind.  On a later trip into HdG I returned to the shop and bought them.  I imagined a Humpty Dumpty egg, crowned with a version of the cap, precariously perched with a larger version of the cap below serving as a safety net.  But instead of seating King Humpty on a wall, I envisioned him on a high tower similar to those I had seen on a recent trip to Ireland.   The resulting painting is full of contradictions in scale.  The caps are out of scale of the tower, from each other, and Humpty himself is monstrously large for the tower.  The tower itself looms over a mor...

 Before Ida, Isabel Last night rem nants of hurricane Ida swept through, bringing a torrential downpour, but no flooding or high winds here.  In September 2003 we weren't so fortunate.  The wind from Isabel dropped our enormous tulip poplar, multiple other tree limbs, and the tidal surge flooded the cottage up to the window sills.  We sustained tens of thousands of dollars damage. We came back to the cottage from Wilmington as soon as it was wade-in accessible.  Here Mary and Mike are circumnavigating the house by kayak, about to dock at the ramp up to our deck on the previously inland side of the cottage. After I rebuilt from all the damage I installed this plimsoll plaque marking the high water mark on our kitchen wall. I have since installed a brace-bar across our double doors facing the Bay for when the weather is severe or when we aren't here.  The quotation is from Shakespeare's King Lear as he rants against the raging storm.    Later I de...

  Four Seasons A Found Frames Set   A thrift store find (four for a dollar) of small rustic but somewhat baroque frames were asking for content.  I was thinking about colonial Mexican retablos.  What evolved were four allegorical representations of the seasons.   Flora [Spring] is a flower face woman.  She has a floral glyph in the corner.   Fear Glas [Summer]  is a version of the traditional Green Man, with a leafy visage.  His glyph is a gold butterfly.   Autumna [Fall] is a leaf of the seasonal change. She is accompanied  by a copper sweet gum glyph.   Boreas [Winter] is the frosty Old Man Winter.  His glyph is a silver snowflake.    The small, roughly postcard size paintings are acrylic on illustration board.

  Blackground Paintings 5 Two Birds and a Horse Here are a few more blackground paintings that feature creatures.     Egret Rising is acrylic on canvasboard.  There's an arc of lunar phases above, and an arc of egret glyphs in gold in various postures.         Talking Crow , acrylic on canvasboard, is unnatuaralistically white.  He speaks in Lenni Lenape (or Delaware Indian)  petroglyphs as found engraved on rocks in the Chesapeake/Susquehanna region.  I have added color here.  I have used Lenape petrogyphs in many paintings,       Equus , also acrylic on canvasboard, is painted in what I call Greco-Deco style, a hybrid of classical Greek style and the Art Deco style of the 1920-30s.  Again here, as in Talking Crow, I did not feel constrained in color.  

    Blackground 4 "Cottage Rose" "Cottage Rose" is acrylic on canvasboard.  Flanking the two blossoms are rose and petal glyphs done with metallic paint markers.