This little 12 x 16 is called "That's just the way it is". Kinda makes me want to quick reach out and grab the plate before all the peas spill off. I like the optical distortion........it just happens by itself, and I really find that this piece says everything and more that I set out for it to say.
I can remember way back when.........drawing class, where we we're learning about color and composition. One of the students complained to the teacher about how such a boring subject could never become an interesting drawing. To which the teacher replied "Its the artist's job to make the subject interesting".
I wanted to try something a bit grander in scale this time. An actual setting as a subject, just like someone might sit down to. It started with the idea of french crullers, and blossomed from there. The crullers went down first and then I added the tea cup and sugar bowl. Again, I like the way the direct expression of these items, instead of a laborious drafting of them, seems to make them dance on the table cloth.
Last year when we vacationed in Palm Springs, we spent a lot of mornings eating breakfast in a place called Sherman's Deli. Pancakes were always my favorite! Those pancake breakfasts inspired this piece called "Breakfast, The Sunday Edition" 14 x 18. You can't get food like this here in Hawaii....where the joke is........."Best food I had in Hawaii was on the airplane coming over". Unless of course you like spam! (the stuff in the blue can, not the email kind) Later.
I've had this painting in the back of my mind for about a week. Once I got around to painting it, instead of trying to figure out how to paint it, this is what I got......."Peach Shortcake and Ice Cream" 11 x 14. This is a nice high key painting with a lot of electricity, something that I wanted to achieve at its outset.
Its a rainy day here in Hawaii. I'm looking out the window remembering back to how this "painting thing" started. Working at the family sign shop, back in New York state, 36 years old, telling my dad how I was going to be up and running as an artist by the time I was 40. Well I'm 54 now, and I can turn out a pretty decent painting. Most of the time I feel I have something worth while to say when I'm painting. Somewhere on this stretch of the road, the money is supposed to start rolling in, right? Right??
This is my first new piece in about 3 weeks, as some serious personal problems have consumed all of my attention units, leaving me nothing to paint with. I needed to try and get back into some sort of positive energy flow, so I picked up a brush just to see what would happen.
Let them eat cake! Or at least maybe a painting called "Black Forest Cake" 12 x 16. I'm finding the cakes and pies a bit more constraining than the Ice Cream paintings as with ice cream, you can do just about anything you want. With cake or pie you can't stray too far off the path, or people won't be able to "duplicate" what your trying to get across to them.
I keep looking at this blank page, and I think, what do I write about today? I need to make something positive happen today. At the rate I'm going I'll need 2 more lifetimes to achieve any kind of monetary success as a painter. So everyday from now on, I will do at least one thing to "market myself" every day. 
