Memories of the Mediterranean

The Beach Path at Cap d'Ail 24x36

The above is a work in progress that may take some time yet to complete, because it is filled with the sort of detail that I don't normally use in painting, architectural and particularly the people in the scene which need fleshing out: I am placing myself (seated on the bench) and three other friends, at our present ages, in this scene where we shared good times in the distant past, because in a real sense we still inhabit that place: it is sun-warmed and carefree and full of possibility in a way that only youth can truly embrace, and yet we still hold onto that feeling even in our advancing years.  Just a short walk into the foreground brings one to the border of Monaco, and the homes along this coast and the people living there were all quite posh.

And then I have two studies from my dog walks, along Oswego Creek as the season turns lush and soft.

A Quiet Dark Water 12x16

A Silty Creek 11x14

Green

Emerald Pool 8x8

Along the Channel 8x10

Green is power, nature's fuse, the color of more forces and guises than are countable, a messenger announcing itself, paradoxically, as the hue of both renewal and reproduction or infirmity and illness.  It is at once the preternaturally ambiguous color of life and death, the vernal sign of vitality, and the livid tinge of corruption... 

As the color of Venus and Mercury, devoted lovers, green is peace, vegetation, gladness and rebirth.  It is associated with the number five and is the fairy color, the primal wash, the heraldic tint of envy, of nausea and of hope, of solid gems and eerie mists, of sea cabbage, eelgrass, salt thatch, subaqueous plants, algae, and sea lettuce bearding the rocky shore.  "Green derives from blue and surpasses it," says an old Chinese proverb, referring to the student who, learning from a teacher, grows to surpass him.  Did you know that "greenth" is a legitimate word, although rare, meaning verdure?  To "green" is even a verb, in Scotland, meaning to yearn.  So many hues and shades and tints of green exist in the natural world, so multifarious are its guises, it is impossible ever to fully know them....

From Alexander Theroux in Secondary Colors

Goat Island

Goat Island - 22x28 oil on canvas

This island on the Willamette in West Linn has fascinated me for years, especially when the Great Blue Herons are nesting in these trees; sometimes there are dozens for them flying around at once, quite a sight.

This next is a work in progress of a long-time friend, John, from a time in the distant past when we rafted rivers in southern Oregon, particularly the Rogue and the Illinois.

When We Were Young - 18x14 oil on canvas