My lifestyle is starting to catch up with me. My painting is up and down with an occasional good effort surrounded by immense wastes of time. Still planning for my trip to Hawaii in October but little by little I’m falling prey to the fear that I will not be ready and that I can do little to be prepared for working remotely half way around the world on my advertising— plus I want to paint a lot.
The Gwinnet Parks Plein Air show is in a few weeks and I had to take two of my best from all the work I did this summer. About eight paintings. In my state of mind I had a hard time picking which ones to enter but in the end chose the view of the courthouse in Lawrenceville and the recent 12 x24 of McDaniel’s farm that I spent way to much time fussing with. We’ll see if I even get one accepted—it’s always a shock to see how good the competition is. A good shock though. In the end I love good painting, even if I can’t do it myself sometimes.
Last weekend I painted both days. On Saturday I spent four hot humid hours working on a 12 x 24″ over at McFarland but really was not pleased with the results. I’m still dicking around with it and it’s now no where near fresh plein air. Sunday I had high hopes —with a bit of Google research I explored the ruins of the paper mils on Sope Creek and was excited about setting up amidst the decaying stone walls and arches that remain from these Civil War era mills. I drove down Johnson Ferry to Paper Mill Rd. but was confounded by a washed out bridge a mile away from my intended parking spot at Sope Creek Park. After nearly hour of driving I finally g
ot over to the other side of the creek and parked the car and took the long path down to the creek where the ruins lay. I’ve been here once before but never explorer the ruined mill, or mills as I was about to find, With all the rain we have had the creek was awash and there was no way to get to the other side. My frustration was growing as I tried to carry all my gear up stream to find some spot to cross—nothing, and a hard hike too. I finally was shocked to discover a whole set of similar ruins on the side I was on. My painting day was saved! I set up after looking around and finally got to work about an hour and a half later than intended. Just as I set up it started to rain. It poured, I painted, it poured some more, I painted. In the end I finished a small 9 x 12 you see here. Very alizarin, but the feeling is there. I decided to cut out to the road and follow it back to the parking lot, it was an easier hike and I’d had plenty of exercise already. So I came out on to the street right next to the washed out bridge with all sorts of interesting construction equipment. I had some time so I set up for a quick portrait of one of the Caterpillar tractors. I call it Cat in the Rain—As things tend to go this ended up the best painting of the weekend.
