'Overexposed' 22'x 28'

Yesterday I also finished another painting. I will take it over to the gallery later today I think. I haven't been doing very well with taking photos of my works, and been event worse about updating my website MY SITE I just received an email informing me I have sold another 3 paintings in Seattle. Another interesting developments up there too... I guess a art reproduction company, Grand Image (their site), contacted me about signing with them for 4 years. I need to discuss a few specifics with them but not really seeing any reason not to do so.

So yesterday I was in Logan doing some repair work. I used that as an opportunity to take some photos of the work we did there. The bottom picture is the bathroom where we had the repair work needed. The homeowner seemed a little put out that no one removed the toilet when we painted the powder bath, so wen they changed toilet to a super low profile some of the original white walls showed. In all the years I have been painting I have never heard of someone just expecting something like that. I guess they thought we were plumbers also. Of course the wall needs to be finished down to the new toilet -just weird they thought the wall should have been finished behind the old one. Of course all they heard from us was, "we'll take care of that."



This is the master bedroom. The ceiling is genuine silver leaf aged with a true patina. The contrast in this finish isn't nearly as strong and it looks in the photos. It is hard to photograph highly reflective surfaces. It is a little stronger than I would have liked - it was what they wanted though. Some of the cool iridescence doesn't show up at all, even in the detail.



This is Aluminum leaf (the "silver" leaf you get at craft stores) on a burnished plaster finish. The leafing is lightly aged with some steel wool giving a "brushed" metal look. the shaped are based on a drawing I did in VA of some daisies that are kind of drying up. I used that drawing in several ceramics pieces I did in school too.

kids' rooms murals

This is in the girl's room. It is about 6'x9'. unfortunately you cant see the little bugs there are crickets grasshoppers caterpillers little bees and wasps and even a fly.




This is in the boy's room. It is about 7' x 12' pretty monumental effect actually. Oliver LOVED it.


Yesterday I went up to Park City to do some repair work on some plaster in a house that had a sprinkler (interior fire prevention) leak. It was a house where I had painted some murals for the kids' rooms. I was able to get some photos while I was there, more later but I've got to get up to Logan, and I am hoping to get home before the kids go to bed tonight. Really starting to get to me how often that happens.

Finished.... for now

So I am "finished" with the stuff I needed to complete on this trip. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get done until yesterday, but now I am home again. This photo shows what the walls look like – this is that same room with all the masking in the previous post . Much of the ceiling has the same finish on it. Usually in really small spaces – especially with low ceilings, it is important to finish the ceiling as well as the walls. Often, in early consultations, clients express concerns that having anything other than white on their ceiling will make the ceiling feel closer. I have found that white simply makes the ceiling feel forgotten or even the whole space feel uncompleted. I think either of these is worse than having it look closer.

Sometimes when I am doing a whole house – especially in colored plaster, the ceilings add up to be a very substantial amount of additional money. In these situations often it works to find a similar color to the plaster for some of the ceilings. Rarely is the best option to have all the ceilings just be painted. Mostly it seems to depend on how awkward the ceiling may be, and more importantly how much of your field of vision is ceiling in that particular space. Ceilings can be a really good opportunity to support the feeling you are attempting with the walls. Even if the walls are just a carefully selected paint color, the ceiling color can be a color that can have a powerful effect.

In our library/nursery/guestroom we have a deep turquoise on the walls , The lighting isn’t great there, so I went with a darker color on the walls because darker colors recede into the distance in low light situations. The more intense color prevents the room from looking drab in the low light. Much of the natural light in this room come almost vertically up. This is reflected off the concrete of our neighbor’s driveway that is right outside that window and the neighbor’s house blocks most of the light from the sky that would be very blue. Light reflected from the ground is usually reddish (unless it is off of grass of course) so on the ceiling in there we put a very bright lemony green (almost a chartreuse muted just enough to read as white). I think this color gives a look of a glow that makes the soft light look more comforting and makes the ceiling combine with the walls really well. If it was done the same darker color as the walls, it would have absorbed way too much light . Unless you are trying to achieve a stark or rigid look and feel (maybe in a very formal setting), true white should be avoided for any painted surfaces.

My Lonley Heart

I really enjoy listening to this guy playing in the subway. He is on the uptown side of the spring street station (green line), pretty much every time I have been there in the past few years. I love his dilapidated old guitar and the way he pauses for trains, completely unselfconsciously. And I really love the way he truly doesn’t seem to care about whether anyone is listening or not. I guess the thing I love most is the plaintive longing in his love songs. I suppose it really strikes a chord partly because I am always missing Charlotte so much while I am away.

bogged down

The little bedroom (how it looks today) that I have been working on for weeks.


I have noticed that things rarely seem to be going well (quickly) on my painting jobs and then all the sudden everything is done. Sounding like a real optimist here… Anyway I am at that point that it seems like nothing is getting done day after day and I am supposed to be done tomorrow I really don’t see how this could possibly happen. We are going to be working late into the night again tonight- in fact we have been working 10-15 hour days since we got here. We are currently working on the master bedroom walls. We are doing kind of a subtle bi-directional stria (streaking horizontal and vertical) in warm creamy white over a mauvey brown basecoat that has been covered by a thin veil of translucent iridescent gold. I added a mica powder to water based polyurethane that only reflects a gold color when it catches the light, but is otherwise clear. Sorry, I am probably getting too basic here, don’t mean to offend. I will definitely post a picture later but I am sure most of the effects couldn’t be seen in photos even if you were comparing quite a few from different angles in different light. One of the downsides to the understated finishes I try to produce is that they rarely photograph well. I almost always hate it when the first thing you see when you walk into a room is the finish on the walls. When I see that I can almost hear the often accompanying “I Fauxed it!”

Initial Posting

So I am here in NYC (above picture is out my "bedroom" window in the evening) trying to finish up a job - that keeps expanding, and have finally been unable to resit the urge to start some kind of a blog. Mostly I have been resiting because I know that I would have a very hard time with three aspects that would be important to my feeling in any way successful in this endeavor. There are going to be several others ways that I will fall sort as well. I just don't feel those are very important. Three ways let’s see now I don’t remember them.... I know one was a lack of focus. That one is obviously already kicking in... Oh, and consistency - I probably will make like 5 posts in a day then go months with nothing. Finally the one I feel is maybe the most important, and the one I am sure I will fail most miserably at fighting, is a fairly consistent tend toward the negative. I don’t really think of myself as a pessimist I am not negative by nature I don’t think. I seems to have something to do with writing stuff down and the major effort it take for me to follow one train of thought long enough to try to actually communicate it in writing. Usually by the end of the sentence I am second guessing every aspect of it so much that I often am not able to even leave it in anymore. Somehow the negative stuff makes it through maybe cause it is harder to construe those to be in any way bragging which I am always concerned that I am going to sound like. It is definitely interesting to me that I am much more concerned about sounding like I am bragging that actually bragging. I guess the most obvious of the shortcomings I will that that I do Not feel matter much is grammar - luckily I have a wife that actually does care about such things so hopefully she will rescue me from some of the most heinous of my grammatical transgressions.

This is my "bedroom". Nice rosewood walls, don't ya think?