field sketches *summer 2025*
"Great Horned" - Great Horned Owl
24"x24" Acrylic on Panel
~PRIVATE COLLECTION~
Almost exclusively my wildlife paintings are composed from a specific scene that I have found, or even more specifically, a scene that has found me, which is almost always the case. That is my preferred way of creating a painting. On occasion however I'll start with some really good bird, or animal, reference that I have and build a scene around that bird as is the case with this Great Horned Owl. The limb the owl is perched on is from a Wild Cherry that hangs over my back yard and the woodland background came from sections of the woods behind my house. I enjoyed composing this scene from a few different sources.
"Great Horned"
"Great Horned" thumbnail drawings from my sketchbook.
And this is how the idea took hold. I started with the larger drawing but it wasn't what I was looking for so I did the tiny drawings at the bottom left of the page, liked the smallest one and drew the slightly larger owl on the branch in the lower right. From there I went straight into the 24"x24" acrylic painting. I do a lot of composing in all my wildlife paintings but in this case I had a little more compositional leeway than I would have had with a more particular and specific scene. It nicely preserved the quiet and riveting power of the owl's strength and presence without competition from a more involved scene, and with this painting, exactly what I was looking for.
"Overhang" - Ovenbird and Ferns
30"x24" Acrylic on Panel
~PRIVATE COLLECTION~
"Well, 'Overhang' is an Understatement! Most everything in this painting is either hanging out and over thin air or hanging on for dear life. There is a stream behind my house called Bear Run. One of the small runs that feeds this sweet flowing stream is a ravine, a fairly steeped affair at that, and that is where this scene precariously clings to the life giving rootball of one of the trees that grow along it's edges. Barely more than a trickle, I love walking this little feeder stream as it is absolutely choked with these intimate stream bank scenes. So many in fact at times it's almost overwhelming. My favorite time of year to walk this waterway is in the heat of summer, easing along, taking everything in and enjoying the cooling air that works down it's steeply sloped banks
"Hickory" Grey Squirrel and Shagbark Hickory
30"x24" Acrylic on Panel
"The seasons and the changing of seasons must surely be among life’s greatest treasures. It’s difficult for me to pin down my favorite of seasons but fall, with it’s mosaic array of color, certainly holds strong in my heart. Sassafras, ash, sugar maple and that impossible yellow glow of a late October mockernut hickory. A world of color on fire immersed in melancholy. But it’s shagbark hickory that pulls at my heartstrings. Late to color with golden yellow green, a seasonal finale and the season of the grey squirrel. Moving with the flow of liquid silver amid an autumn drop of leaves, amassing as many nuts as possible, both devouring and burying, it’s the hickory nut that’s most prized by the greys. And those legs, those steel spring legs can catapult him off that hickory trunk or send him as a ghostly wisp to the upper reaches of the branches".
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"Hunting The Shallows" Great Egret
30"x40" Acrylic on Panel
~PRIVATE COLLECTION~
“Egrets, sudden and breathtaking, spiritual tones of white, so pristine and so hallowed. If there is a purity of line and form and elegance in nature Great Egrets most certainly have attained it. I’m always quite taken by the inexhaustible visual poetry of these great birds. Whether in their languid aerial flight or coursing the water lilies and duckweed, they are the embodiment of grace and fluid line. And that duck weed, indeed the great historian. Ever recording the travels of geese, of wigeon and teal, of turtles and skittering frogs in their broken trails across the water’s living surface. Beaver and muskrats carving out the bigger channels liberating swimming rafts of mosses and lilies spilling across the shallows in a free flowing dance. Channels of opportunistic openings in the aquatic canopy for fishing egrets, unwavering and statuesque in their cast iron patience yet somehow liquid as the very waters they hunt”.
"Hunting The Shallows" was exhibited in the 2023 Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum's "Birds in Art" exhibition in Wausau, Wisconsin from September 9 through November 26, 2023.
"The Swimming Hole"
20"x16" oil on linen
~ PRIVATE COLLECTION ~
Just 50 yards down stream from the scene location of "Overhang" pictured above, is the 'Swimming Hole', our childhood go to relief from summer's swelter. Originally there was a larger sycamore next to this one and we would dive off of it's step like root structure that led down to the pool. The pool itself was deeper and broader than today but not over our heads. A couple of hours of diving, swimming and just being kids playing around in the water and we were sufficiently cooled from the oppressive, atmospheric swill.
Working on location in two to four hour time sessions I painted this piece through the course of the summer, maybe seven or so painting sessions, accompanied by a family of Red-headed woodpeckers and the nonstop chronic singing of a Red-eyed Vireo. Nothing says "Summer" like a Red-eyed Vireo.
The lighting at this spot was tricky as in mere minutes it seemed to change from bright and direct to soft and diffused. So while waiting for a favorable shift in the woodland light I'd take periodic breaks and step down into the stream bed and study the scene from different angles. Something miraculous happens when painting on location. I begin to see paint-able scenes everywhere I look. It's as if a veil has been lifted and the 'hidden' reveals it's self, amplifying my awareness. I think a few more paintings from this location are forthcoming.