June 2008

I am always excited when I can check off another state where I have painted. This past weekend I had the good fortune to paint in Manchester, New Hampshire. I started the painting Saturday morning, but was forced to abandon my post due to rain. Luckily, New Hampshire has a fantastic museum - the Currier. The Currier is a top notch art museum. One that is worthy of a city much larger than Manchester. In addition to other types of artwork, the Currier houses many really great landscape paintings including works by Gifford, Monet, Haseltine, Kennset and Cole. Quite a few of these pieces were painted in New England and the visit was very inspiring. It was so inspiring I couldn't wait to get out of bed the next morning and get back to painting. Even though I had only been at it about 30 minutes the day before, I had to make substantial changes to the tone because Saturday was cloudy and gloomy and Sunday was bright and sunny. The subject was Weston Tower, which sits on a hill top and has a great view of Manchester and the Monadnock mountain.  I haven't done many architectural subjects and now I don't know why. I thoroughly enjoyed painting the tower and the play of colors between the man made objects and the natural surroundings. I have to make some adjustments, primarily a few drawing corrections and increasing the value on the light side of the tower. I realize the photo below is fuzzy and I plan to update it at a later time.