Corner Station

Corner Station, 8x10

purchase

Today the city of Round Rock, just north of Austin, sponsored their first annual Chalk Walk Arts & Music Festival. Plein Air Austin was invited to join in the festivities, which several of us did. The weather was perfect and many turned out. The subject I chose is an old gas station that has been restored on the outside and re-purposed inside into small offices. It's a really cool little place.

Ready To Pick Up

Ready To Pick Up, 10x8

SOLD

Furey Motors, an auto repair garage opened by my Uncle Louis Furey, has been in Malvern, Ohio for a very long time. Since it predates me, I never even thought to ask just how long. To me, it's been there forever. My cousin Tom now owns the garage and while the car designs have changed, everything else looks virtually unchanged from the way I remember it during our family visits of my childhood. 

The garage was a special place. One reason was that Uncle Louis always made sure I had a clean mechanic's rag ready for my back pocket when I showed up for "work." That was cool. Even cooler, however, was that Uncle Louis had one of those old bottle-dispensing Coke machines at the garage AND the keys to go with it. To me this meant the Cokes were free, not just for me, but for Uncle Louis, as well. This being my perception, at even the slightest twinge of thirst, I would hit up my very patient elder for one frosty beverage after another. 

In hindsight, I don't know how Uncle Louis weathered this brazen tendency toward self-gratification so magnanimously, but he always did.  Louis and my Aunt Alta both passed away several years ago, now. But their seven children, and the two generations that follow them are remarkably similar in their kindness.

Learning In Progress

View From Driftwood Winery, 9 x 12

I'm just back from a three day workshop with Jill Carver in Wimberley. Jill is super talented, lots of fun and full of valuable information, which I hope will percolate down through my very being over the next few months and be reflected in my work. There was so much to think about, I found myself time and again focusing on something Jill had emphasized, only to ignore other important things that I thought were already second nature. 

Take the field study above, for example. If you zoom in, you can see the canvas isn't even completely covered, because I neglected to complete the block-in at the beginning. The result — lots of annoying little white specks for one thing, and variations in color and value in areas that didn't need it, for another. Because of all that, the eye has to search more than necessary for intended focal point. Annoying, indeed.

Oh, well. Lesson learned. And now I'm going to have a beer.