A description of my art show that is being held at the Wellesley Free Library in Wellesley, MA from December 2, 2020 through December 31, 2020.

A watercolor painting based on the sketch that follows. I used only three pigments for this painting: indigo, cadmium red and cadmium yellow. My aim was to keep it as loose as possible.

A pencil sketch of my neighbors’ yard in winter. I used this sketch as an inspiration for the painting Adirondack Chairs.

A watercolor painting inspired by a sketch I drew at the Broadmoor Audubon sanctuary in South Natick, Massachusetts. I changed the format of the painting to a “portrait” orientation from the “landscape” orientation of the sketch. I also increased the amount of liquid water in the foreground so that there wasn’t an even balance of white ice and green liquid water. I tightened up the contour line of the tree tops so that they fall along a single diagonal line.

The sketch that inspired the painting “Broadmoor Winter”.

A view from my hotel balcony, looking across the Megunticook River in Camden Maine. I used a 3 x 3 grid to tighten up the design of this painting, and the diagonals of the grid to line up most of the roof lines.

I spent a pleasant summer afternoon sketching this scene, looking across the Megunticook River in Camden, Maine from my hotel balcony.

I enjoy sketching people while I am riding the green line subway into Boston. I was inspired by a man who was looking at his cell phone. Lots of people look at their phones while on the T - it seems so alienating. I added a wild fall scene outside the train - which no one is really looking at.

I drew this man while riding the T subway into Boston. I loved how he occupied the space - his right leg spilling into the aisle was wonderful to draw. I added more passengers to the watercolor painting, more of a subway interior and a scene of wild foliage.

This painting was inspired by a sketch I did at a beach in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and by my reaction to the environment. The weather was hot and humid, there was a brisk wind, and the ocean was churning. Although it was hot, I did not feel like going into the rough water. I use lots of repetition in this piece; it is verging on being abstract.

I did several drawings one day while I was visiting the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. This painting combines figures from two sketches. The gallery space is from my imagination and memory. A key to this painting is knowing where the horizon was. I was sitting while I drew - therefore my horizon fell at about the sternum of the gallery goers. That made it straightforward to determine the heights of the people and the top of the doorway - all at different places in space.

This sketch is one of the two that I combined to create Art Lovers.

This sketch is the second one that I used to create the painting Art Lovers.

I did a simple sketch at Morses Pond in Wellesley, MA of a lifeguard. This painting has a background that I added from memory.

Morses Pond sketch

I often draw at my local mall - the Natick Mall. This painting was inspired by a drawing I did of a man, a woman and a young child in an umbrella stroller. I decided not to incorporate the man in this piece. I did want the environment to be a mall, so I had to create various interiors, shoppers and workers. Because there was so much going on in the design, I decided to limit my color palette to blue, orange, yellow and violet. I also kept the people other than the mother very simple - using “modeling” with just a few shades of paint to indicate the figures. This painting could have been very confusing if I had not limited the values and hues.

I found the woman’s pose in this sketch very appealing. I decided that having the man in the final painting wasn’t going to help it - so I did not use him.

This painting departs most from the sketch that inspired it. In the sketch, the emphasis was on the viewers at a story telling event that I attended in Boston. When I started to work on the composition of the painting, I felt that emphasizing the backs of people was not that interesting. I then spent a lot of time on a composition that I ultimately rejected, which showed a profile view of the storyteller telling her story, and several audience members - most of whom were also in profile. I finally decided to concentrate on the story teller. I dealt with the audience members and the waitress in a very simplified manner. I used a blue orange color scheme.

What I loved about this sketch was the expressive poses of the audience members. Ultimately, I abandoned this viewpoint, but I kept/modified the hand gesture of the story teller.

I love trains and train stations. There are a few within walking distance of my house. I especially like the view into the space under the bridge.

I did not change the painting too much from this sketch. Mostly I fixed the perspective of the retaining wall on the lower right.