Some of my paints got mold in them so I cleaned my palette with vinegar and then filled from a clean palette. I thought it might be interesting ( to some of you anyway) to show the palette I’ve arrived at to paint landscapes and nocturnes. Most of these are Winsor Newton paints, although occasionally I use others for specific colors. My cerulean blue is a mix of Holbein and Winsor Newton, for example. I have other paints that I use from time to time, but these are the ones I use all the time, day to day

I’m working on the ‘real’ painting for which I had done a little study earlier. I always fall in love with an image and then wonder what possessed me to attempt it. That’s what I am doing now. I’m also exploring my idea of not taking the ‘finished’ painting all the way to the edge.

This is another study I’ve been working on. The idea is to make most of my mistakes (if possible) on the studies, so they are already spent when I start the full size painting, which is next…

This is a study of a lake hike as night was falling.

This is a large nocturne from the little town of Madrid, 40 minutes south of Santa Fe. Shortly after moving to Santa Fe, I spent a night traveling around the area taking photographs. This is the Boarding House General Store in Madrid about four in the morning,  It was once a mining town and now is full of artists and galleries and lovely little shops.

In the 1960s, one could have bought the entire town for $250,000 from the mining company that owned it then.You can find it on the website here: http://tinyurl.com/BHMadrid

This is from the Chama river near Ghost ranch (which is near Abiquiu) in New Mexico.

When I moved to California 3 decades ago, one of my roommates used to let me borrow his car and drive around at night around Santa Cruz. I did a painting from memory (and from drawing the inside of his car) which was pretty terrible. It stayed rolled up for thirty years, and then I thought I would try and resurrect it. I drove after work down to that area of highway one to get some reference and am in the process of making a pointillist gouache painting of it now.

This is a small study for a possible painting of a night hike on Mt. Tam after work in the bay area. The last image is a little friend I met that night.

This is a lovely area on the back side of Mt. Tamalpais in Marin County in California.

This was from a series of late night/early morning photographs taken around Santa Fe in the summer of 2013. The photograph from which this was painted was taken about 4am. This painting was accepted into the Masterworks of New Mexico exhibition in 2015.