Low Tide Sunset

It continues to be a struggle to find inspiration to paint, but I created something today, so that's progress. It's a quiet scene at a muddy beach during low tide; the sun sets on the distant horizon as fiery clouds float overhead. Nothing over-the-top, but it's still a painting and thus a statement against the grief of my mom's passing. What tangles my paintings with her memory is that she would buy greeting cards each year with prints of my paintings on them, and that just won't happen again, sadly. 

I've been thinking about experimenting more with my painting style and trying new approaches to landscapes. It can be a challenge to find something new to say in a landscape when you've been painting them for so long. Paintings blur together and there's the burden of wanting things to be realistic enough to be recognizable, but you don't want "realism" to turn into stress - painting should be fun, not homework. 

I also sometimes wonder how artists develop their own unique styles. Does style just happen or do they one day put a paintbrush to the canvas and do something completely different than normal, and if it works, they keep going with that approach? It's hard to say. Countless books will teach how to create good landscape paintings, but it seems that style can't be taught, and everyone must find a way to make the process fun and not work. Stuff to think about.

Acrylic painting: 14" x 17"

Apricot Roses in Rain

 

It's been an awful year so far and I've struggled to find inspiration to paint anything. But giving up doesn't fix the problem, either, so I gave it a whirl today. This painting is a fanciful tribute to roses, particularly those with flowers of apricot and mixed yellows and pinks. Here, we see an ancient climbing rose cover an arbor in bloom on a rainy day. I kept the background abstract as I experiment with looser painting styles and larger blends or blocks of color. I think it worked out pretty well for a spur-of-the-moment effort to paint something.

Acrylic painting: 14" x 17"

Fort McHenry Cherry Trees

 

2026 has been a horrible year so far. My mom passed away in early February after months of decline, and her loss has been crushing. The bitterly cold winter produced a huge sleet and snowstorm in January that damaged my home (at least that's fixed now) and killed all the plants I had in containers outside. Sometimes it feels like there will never be another good day ever again. It has been difficult to find any inspiration to paint, but I gave it a go today.

On Friday, I visited Fort McHenry while the cherry blossoms were in bloom - their peak time is about a week later than those in Washington DC. The historic fort is worth exploring and you can easily spend a few hours walking the grounds and learning the history of the place. The cherry trees added a nice blast of spring color to the scene, which I tried to represent in this painting. 

Acrylic painting: 14" x 17"

Sunfire on Snow

It's been a miserably cold winter so far in central Maryland, though thankfully this year has brought very little snow so far. This fictional scene is of a colder place where snow covers both the ground and many conifer trees all winter. The fiery light of the rising or setting sun is the only warmth offered here until spring. This painting is a bit of an experiment since I intentionally created it looser than most of my paintings. It has larger blocks of unblended color for a more impressionist feel. I also swapped the red and yellow iron oxides out with Pyrrole and Cadmium Free Yellow Deep. Those new colors will provide brighter and purer red and yellow colors at the cost of a bit of opacity. 

Acrylic painting: 14" x 17"

Early Snow in the Woods

Some parts of the nation have seen rather early snowfall and frosty autumn days more appropriate to the middle of winter. While it's been cold and gloomy here in central Maryland, we have thankfully been spared any early season snow. In this scene we can go for a walk in the woods as a light coating of snow dusts the brown leaves still clinging to the trees. I hope this winter is milder than the last one.

Acrylic painting: 14" x 17"

Bodkin Creek in Fall

Bodkin Creek is a small stream that flows through parts of Downs Memorial Park and then into the Chesapeake Bay. It barely gets a mention on a map, and you'd have to know where to look for it, but like all rivers and streams it's full of life and beautiful, particularly in the fall. Here we see the creek on a late autumn afternoon in Downs Memorial Park. The low sun casts long shadows and only illuminates the tops of the trees or those along the riverbank. Everything else is lost in shadow as a cold breeze passes through, rattling the drying leaves. 

Acrylic painting: 14" x 17"

Lunar Eclipse Over Mountains

 

Lunar eclipses are considerably more common than solar eclipses, but that doesn't make them any less beautiful or eerie. In the snowy peaks of a distant mountain range, we see the moon turn a deep orange hue as Earth's shadow passes over it. The snow reflects the light, the only warmth in this frigid winter landscape. 

Acrylic painting 14" x 17"