For scale

One of the biggest reasons I moved the studio a couple years ago was for space. The work is getting ever larger, and I didn't have enough room to either set it up at an easel, to get back from it enough to see, or even more problematic, to photograph it. In the space I'm in now I have a white wall- well it was just a plasterboard wall until my son Todd got after it with a big roller and buckets of paint- large enough to install a gallery hanging system. And my old friend, the multi-talented Tim White- helped me figure out how to light the large landscape work I am doing. But the scale is still hard to convey, so I decided to put my studio mate to work.

Grand Prismatic Hot Spring, Yellowstone National Park, oil on canvas, 30 x 120 inches.
With Uly, 120 lbs of good company.

Trespass, 48 x 120 inches, oil on canvas, curio cabinet.

Along Kebler Pass, 48 x 100 inches, oil on canvas, curio cabinet.

Habits

For years I've told Darby my only habits are bad ones. I hope that's not entirely true, but I certainly seem to have fallen out of the habit of posting to this journal.

But my buddy David Oleski is much more disciplined, and an email conversation we were having turned into a post on his studio journal. You can find it here.

Maybe that will fill the bill for the moment, and get me jumpstarted to get back in the habit. There's lots going on. Well, besides snowshoeing with the pups.

Small works are back….

Celebrating the 12 days of Christmas….. or maybe 15. I've got a lot on my plate, we'll see how far I get. But starting today, the first two small pieces are available at www.RichardCHarringtonSmallwork.com.

Each is framed, ready to hang, and USPS Priority Mail in the US is included in the price.

Cathedral, oil on panel, 7 x 7 inches.

$350.00 framed and shipped to you by Priority Mail in the CONUS.

Bright Sunny Day, oil on panel, 6 x 8 inches.

SOLD, framed and shipped to you Priority Mail in the CONUS.

In the dark.

I left the pups at home and skied tonight, in a blizzard- first time int two years. My skis are in tough shape, needing a good waxing. The snow was 10 - 12 inches of peanut butter powder, drifts over my knees, wind howling, and within a 1/2 mile I could no longer see the lights of South Lima. At one point I was a bit concerned I was lost, surrounded in a mauve/gray swirl, visibility of about 20 ft. Then I found the hedge row I was kind of expecting.

So much fun. So quiet. And oddly relaxing.

First storm of the season.

First Storm of the Season, 11 x 11 inches, oil on panel.

I didn't want to go out. I wasn't expecting this weather yet- I was living in the fantasy of having another month of fall. But today we woke up to 14 º. I put off the walk til noon, when it had risen to a balmy 18º. And the wind had kicked up.

It would have felt a lot warmer at 7 in the morning.

But my first rule of living with dogs is, A tired dog is a good dog.

Rule 2? A not tired dog is a serious pain in the ass.

So layered up in wool, down, and whatever else seemed like it might work, we headed out. Of course my two companions were wearing their summer outfits. Their beards didn't ice up, their faces didn't freeze, their toes weren't numb. And they were not the least bit excited when I'd had enough and turned for home.

And then, for me, the walk paid off. Well, in addition to the aforementioned tired dogs. The sun, trying to push through the storm, slipping in and out. I don't paint very directly much anymore. My work has evolved into a very indirect process of layer after layer, applied over days and weeks, often into months.

But today I got home and went right at it. It was fun, and made the 45 minutes of freezing my….. of being cold, seem even more worthwhile.

These two. 45 minutes was nothing. Another half hour of all-star wrestling finally did them in.

Pale Horse

Pale Horse, 16 x 20 inches, oil on glass.

I've been toying with animal images for years, trying to escape my pre-disposition for rendering the snot out of things. Then one day I was cleaning my pallet (I use a big sheet of glass), and saw the paint through the clean underside. Maybe there was a solution there.

I don't think it's something I'm going to repeat, working on the glass ground, as the fragility makes it too iffy, but it was a fun and satisfying experiment.

It will be my contribution to the Rochester Contemporary members show this month.

The painting doesn't actually have the reflection of my shoulder along the top, or the chair leg on the right. Turns out there are more problems with the glass than fragility.

dia de los muerta...

Things are showing up in the studio lately. Mainly me. Time to get back on the horse. More to come soon.