Alla Prima (Italian; at first attempt) refers to a painting technique where the artist starts and completes a painting in one session. With oil paint it therefore includes layering wet paint into wet paint, while with pastel painting it simply means starting and completing a painting in one, generally short session....

I love the boldness of Iris flowers and this mixture of various Bearded Irises sprang from my imagination. I look at a couple of individual flower pictures to make sure I am staying consistent with the way the plants present themselves, but the collection of colors and positions comes out of my mind’s eye.

 
“Cosmos & Black-Eyed Susans” is one of my largest oil & enamel paintings so far as I am confined to nothing wider than 48” when I am picking up canvases as the local art store....

“Dancing Cosmos #2” is one of a series of joyous Cosmos paintings that represent a fantasy of what I was hoping my backyard would look like when I sprinkled about a ½ pound of cosmos seed on my prepared dirt. Unfortunately, that part of the yard doesn’t get enough hours of sunlight per day to allow them to flourish … so they flourished in my imagination!

I was painting with a friend who was busy painting some sunflowers from his garden, and I asked him if he could imagine what they will look like directly after the first frost. He laughed at me like I was nuts, so I decided to paint what I had in mind.

“Forest Falls” is more abstract than many of my paintings, coming strictly from my imagination as I think back to seeing a waterfall within the woods on Mount Riga, in Salisbury CT. My sister and brother-in-law have a cabin on Mt. Riga, and our children (and now grandchildren) have enjoyed visiting “the cabin” since they were born.   

 “Maine Morning” is a painting I did almost as a demonstration for a friend who asked me how to paint distant mist. I started to show him the way I would handle the task, and then I went on to finish what had started as a “sketch’ with oil paint, plus the use of Liquin. 

I started with a dark background, then added some exciting abstract reds and magentas, before getting this One Blue Iris to pop out of the painting.

This time I imagined Poppies & Irises … Purely a dream as these would never grow this well here. (Between my studio and the lake is a hillside where I have tried planting Irises, Cosmos, tons of Wildflowers etc., and none of them last very long because the small hill just doesn’t get enough sun. I keep trying but these paintings all end up coming from my imagination as the real thing is always so sparse.)

I love painting the small waterway down on Poverty Hollow Road, about 5 miles from our home, and there is a waterfall that one needs to walk into the woods to see. I have painted it in each of the different seasons and this is a small oil of the scene in autumn.

Anemone Frenzy” is one of my favorite Oil & Enamel paintings because of the feeling I have that I could just get delightfully tangled up in all of that activity and color.....

“Blue Chicory & Queen Anne’s Lace”  I love painting the wild poppy scenes throughout much of Western Europe, especially in France and Italy, BUT, I am also excited to paint many of the wild flower groupings that we have here in Northeastern U.S.  A case in point is this beautiful combination of Blue Chicory (Blue Cornflower) and Queen Anne’s Lace that often times line the highways in Connecticut and Massachusetts. Again, this Abstract Impressionist style painting was completed predominantly with painting sticks (for dripping) and a palette knife, and then some small brush work for the chicory leaves.

“Dance of the Cone Flowers” is one of my “Abstract Impressionist” paintings where I am attempting to capture the feeling I had when I came upon some purple cone flowers in a wildflower field. I think someone must have purposely strewn the seeds there but the tangle of grasses and other flowers seemed quixotic and I loved them.

“Dancing Cosmos #2” is another of a series of joyous Cosmos paintings that represent a fantasy of what I was hoping my backyard would look like when I sprinkled about a ½ pound of cosmos seed on my prepared dirt. Unfortunately, that part of the yard doesn’t get enough hours of sunlight per day to allow them to flourish … so they flourished in my imagination!

I like to walk early in the morning along the lake that we live on, and I often marvel that the fishermen are out on the water even before daybreak. As peaceful as it is for me on land, I can only imagine the serenity this guy was experiencing alone with his quiet thoughts.

“German Floral” is another Abstract Impressionism style painting that came from some pictures I took while spending a month in Munich, trying to immerse myself in the German language.....

 
“Nantucket Blaze” is a second painting that came from my trip to a Collector’s home in Nantucket MA and this painting was completed entirely with tube paint and palette knives. I felt that the palette knife enabled me to carve the grasses out of the thick paint impasto I was applying. Again, the fall colors from the wild blueberry bushes in the dunes were spectacular.

“One Red Poppy” This is the painting that Peter Hastings Falk saw where he wrote the wonderful critique found on the Home page.

 
“Poppies Galore” was painted upon my return from a trip to Provence where I saw this field of poppies and where I completed a small pastel painting on location. In this much larger painting I tried to show the depth perception by dripping paint for the closer grasses and smudging the paint with a paper towel to blur the grasses further away....

“Provence Back Light” I took a group of 16 other artists to Provence to paint with me several years back, and we painted in a number of locations that I had painted in the past, This painting grew from a much smaller one done in the field.

“Anemones and Friends” is an abstract impressionist painting of some of my favorite flowers (Anemones) which inhabit my subconscious.

“Bunches of Irises”  is from a picture taken of the garden in my son’s next door neighbor’s yard in Tubingen Germany. My wife and I were visiting this past spring and these flowers looked spectacular! I later painted these back in my Connecticut studio from a photograph, and using sticks to drip the paint for stems and grasses, and with a palette knife to carve in the iris blooms.

“Dancing Cosmos #1” is one of several Cosmos related paintings I have completed and I am sure I will paint more in the future. I love the color, style and structure of the cosmos flowers and plants as they make me feel their freedom as they sway with every little breeze. I also love that once they begin flowering in July, they continue with their burst of color throughout the next 2-3 months.

“Dancing Lilies” is an example of my painting simply with tube/oil paint and palette knives, and I love how this tool provides me with an added freedom of expression, as I carve and shape the paint on the canvas.....

“Fleur Rouge de Soleil” is a more abstract version of what comes out of my imagination when I just want to depict flowers in the sun. I can imagine this painting in a room with large windows and lots of natural light!

I have visited Monet’s Farmhouse and gardens on a couple of occasions, and it seems that there is color in almost any month. How much fun would it have been to have had Claude himself walk us around his “outdoor studio.”

“Nantucket Dunes” is the result of a trip I took to Nantucket Island, Massachusetts. I had the very good fortune of having a couple from Connecticut, who have been Collectors of my paintings for 20+ years, offer their beautiful home in Nantucket to me and my wife for free, as a gesture of kindness and friendship....

This time I imagined Poppies & Daisies...Purely a dream as these would never grow this well on my shaded, lakefront property. Sometimes I just feel like putting down a lot of color!

I took a group of artist friends to Provence for an 8-day painting trip and while I sketched, painted and took lots of pictures during the trip, this painting was dripped purely from my imagination...ala Jackson Pollock.

“Provence Misty Morning” I have painted in Provence on numerous occasions and this “painting” came to me in my dreams once I returned from one of those trips. It practically painted itself once I got into my studio.