Author Archives: jlr7
Grand Canyon Inspires Painting Pursuit
The Grand Canyon is an inspiring place for hiking, painting, and photographing, which you probably know because I’ve written about art in the Grand Canyon before. During social isolation due to Covid-19, I’ve been able to make virtual trips to the Grand Canyon via painting scenes and moments of my previous visits to the canyon. […]
Plein Air Pandemic Paint Out 2020
I am delighted to be an artist in the Plein Air Pandemic Paint Out 2020. The event is a creative adaptation of what previously had been the Willamette Lavender Festival Plein Air Paint Out which had to be canceled due to Covid-19. In July 2019, I visited the display of artwork from the Lavender Festival […]
Painting Florida’s Palm Trees
Each week or so, I try to pick a theme for my painting. These past couple of weeks, I have been looking at Florida’s palm trees. I had a couple of cigar box panels made from Honduran and Dominican Republic cedar. Light. Rather pretty. So I prepped the panels and then painted palm trees on […]
Urban sketching in Gatlinburg
My first trips to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, were when I was young. My parents would take our family to the mountains for camping and hiking. Eventually we would end up visiting Gatlinburg and stroll down the main drag of Gatlinburg, inhaling the fudge fumes and eventually succumbing to a purchase or a free sample. Sometimes we […]
Painting Cats
Painting with acrylics and developing an approach to different subjects has been one way to stay actively learning while spending time in social isolation. While I have painted with watercolors for two years, acrylic paint behaves so very differently. And painting with the palette knife requires the development of a certain dexterity. Subject-wise, I’ve […]
Hiking, Painting, Plein Air
Recently, the Gainesville Fine Arts Association call for artwork for an “Earth” theme encouraged me to paint three inspirational mountain views with acrylics and two using a palette knife. Mt. Hood view from Palmer Glacier I admired and painted the view of Mt. Hood both from downtown Portland and from lavender fields during the Willamette […]
Artist-in-Residence: Painting and social distancing
This week I was scheduled to be one of the invited artists for the Santa Fe Springs Plein Air Paintout. Like so many other events, the Paintout was canceled. And so I have decided that I am not just social distancing, as has been ordered by the Governor of Florida, but I am now an […]
East Naples Winter Classic Pickleball Tournament – Women’s singles
The day before I played in the mixed doubles at the East Naples Winter Classic Pickleball Tournament, I watched the women’s singles competition at this same Pickleball Capital of the World. As I watched the matches, I admired both the agility and strategy of the players. For most of the games, the women played at […]
Pickleball Capital of the World
Playing pickleball at the East Naples Community Park was amazing. The park calls itself the Pickleball Capital of the World because it has more pickleball courts (54 courts – with 10 more to be added) than anywhere in the world. I had watched on YouTube the 2019 US Open Pickleball Championships, held at the East […]
Cycling and Painting the Hawthorne Trail
One of my New Year’s ambitions was to cycle the Gainesville-Hawthorne State Trail more often than I had in the previous year. By January 7, I’d cycled 80 miles on the trail. The trail is through sections of Paynes Prairie State Preserve. I enjoy going downhill at 24-26 mph, feeling the rush of wind on […]
Great Lakes – painting water and sky
Water and sky present interesting challenges when painting with watercolors. A recent trip put me on the shores of two Great Lakes – Lake Huron and Lake Erie — and gave me the opportunity to paint water and sky. I painted the Gratiot Lighthouse, at the juncture of Lake Huron and the St. Clair River. […]
Grand Canyon raven watercolor
A watercolor portrait of a raven was created during my recent hiking and painting trip to the Grand Canyon. As I took photos of a raven sitting on a fence rail, I talked to the bird, telling it I admired its glistening feathers. I think its response indicated that it wasn’t interested in conversing unless […]
