RMW Ramblings

  Tidewater Dining   The Tidewater Grille is a waterfront restaurant in Havre de Grace on the Susquehanna just above it's entry to the Chesapeake Bay.  In season they have a popular outdoor waterfront dining area.  This is my take on it, just painted today.   The painting is 10 x 8 on a gallery wrapped canvas.

  Rodney Square WWII Flag Court For most of the 20th century Rodney Square was the civic center of Wilmington   During World War II a court of flags of our war allies wrapped the square.  This picture is one side of a stereo card.  I converted the stereo view to a R/G anamorphic image that you can view if you have the appropriate two color glasses. And the stereo card if you have a viewer or able to free view it... And the text on the back...

  A House Portrait   Pat Diodoto died last week, and his wife Sally passed last year. About 20 years ago Sally commissioned me to paint a house portrait of the home her daughter and family were moving from as a memento. This is the resulting watercolor.   The painting references prized possessions of the Diodoto's grand-kids: The tricycle and the much loved bunny in the flowerbed which Sally had re-covered. Here's my layout drawing...

  Mount Salem Nocturne Recently painted, Mount Salem Nocturne shows Mount Salem Church in the night.  I have painted scenes on this block of Mount Salem Lane many times in the past, including a few Christmas cards.  An earlier smaller painting of a similar view, Room for Thought, was the subject of an earlier blog posting https://rmw-ramblings.blogspot.com/2022/02/my-library-globe-5-room-for-thought.html. ,

  Mallard I painted Mallard  today out on the porch.  He took about three hours. He's in a found frame, painted on the thin wood panel that was in the frame behind the glass which I discarded.  My original thought was to paint him in a stylize version with metallic and iridescent paints, but I don't have them here.  As a result the little painting (postcard size) is  a close copy of my reference photo which I found on-line.  I flipped the image horizontally to  face the duck to the right.  Not a lot of imagination here.     

  Patina To fit a larger found frame I painted Patina.     In Patina I experimented with the color palette of the oxides and carbonates of copper as they develop a patina.  I also used metallic copper paint. Some of her belt, collar and shoulder cuffs are in raised dimension. The painting coloration was informed by the color and patterns that develop with use on the copper kitchen counter I built for our cottage.  On occasion I polish it back to a clean metallic sheen and a new patina emerges with time and use.   I have considered extending the patinated copper conceit to the frame, but so far I've resisted the temptation.

, Cathartes Turkey Vulture We frequently see turkey vultures cleaning up our beach.  While we usually see them as ugly, they have an imposing presence and serve an ecological service.  Here is a painting I did of one, Cathartes.. .     Wikipedia tells us " Cathartes is the Greek word καθαρτής, for "purifier," referring to these vultures' role as "cleansers" that "tidy up" decomposing corpses in nature." I labeled my vulture with a heraldic vulture and his botanical  name above my monogram. You may have seen my oversized vulture for Halloween on the entrance to Rockford Tower...