"Harvest Is Great"

Some Kent State art students dropped by as I was painting on the last warm day of 2008. They were changing their majors from fine art painting to illustration. It is strange and wrong that there is this separation. The Renaissance painters were illustrators.

At this point the light is fading, I was getting cold and decided to pack up.

There is a painter in Boston who has a huge delivery truck that he parks all over the city to paint from. It is such a great idea. I'd like to try that some day. Like Steinbeck's, "Travels With Charlie", I'll drive across the country.

"Niche One"

It is one of the first niche paintings I did. There is a relationship between these and the cube paintings. It is the relationship between the curvelinear and the rectilinear. The dichotomy of organic and mechanical is there. Architectural drawing systems and building measurements are fascinating. I love to calculate the placement of bricks and the challenge of creating a convincing illusion.

Three New Pieces By European Artists At The Cleveland Clinic

After visiting dear Aunt Shirley who is fighting cancer on the 8th floor, I ran into an art tour of new art acquisitions and commissions for the hospital. There is a huge display of cascading, rotating random alphabet letters hung from wires. There's a painting of a bed that looks like a roller coaster. There's also a large watercolor of a little boy rowing a boat looking at an empty space shaped like two figures. There is so much to think about here. I have an art education so I am familiar with this kind of cutting edge art. (which is not really cutting edge because it is taught in schools). I really wonder what an average, down to earth, family man thinks as he is confronted with these art works, as he leaves his sick wife. I'll have to ask Uncle John.