Auction for Open Doors This Sunday

The Open Doors and Windows of DT Milford Auction is this Sunday, at 4:00PM. The Milford Art Association will auction off forty windows and doors this year. There is a nice variety of styles and sizes to choose from. They will have some really delicious food there just before the show, so come early and enjoy the refreshments.

Here's a preview of this year's entries. Mine is the one on the first page, in the lower right-hand corner, with the swans on it.

More Open Doors of Milford

I delivered my door last Saturday. It is nice to have it completed and delivered. The meet and greet party is this Friday evening at the Milford Arts Center. I will find out then which business will get my door for display. I do hope that it is going to be in the main drag area of downtown Milford. The open house night is coming up soon, August 19th. I really enjoy sitting out with the door and talking to passers by. I am going to bring some cards and brochures to give out. I also hope to make a map and hand them out to those who are interested.


I've been working on some street paintings lately. I really love to do street paintings. I get to practice perspective, which is always a good thing. People love trying to guess where the location is. So far, I've done one of Guilford, on the green, and Madison, in the downtown area. I would like to do one in Branford next.

I hope to get out to paint at least one day this weekend. The weather is supposed to be really nice. I just wish that summer would last a little bit longer than it does.

My Door for Open Doors and Windows of Milford

This year, Open Doors of Milford expanded to include windows. I decided to again do a door, but I limited my painting to two scenes, one on each side. The side that you see here is of the duck pond in Milford, which is known for the swans, ducks, and geese that gather there all spring and summer long. The other side of the door is a twilight view of a pond covered with lily pads and flowers - kind of a zen moment. I will post a photo later of that. The door will be delivered on Friday.

The event includes an evening when all of the shops are open and all of the artists display their doors and windows outside on the sidewalk. It is a fun night. I enjoy meeting everyone and being in Milford. This is on Friday, August 19th. The auction is in September.

Open Doors and Windows of Milford

Abandoned House

I started this painting a couple of years ago and put it aside. I just didn't like it. A couple of months ago, I worked on it some more and I like it a little bit more now. The house is owned by a farmer who lives next door. It is getting pretty old and sad looking, but it has some nice features like the side bay windows. I can imagine a large farming family living in it and growing corn and other crops and raising black and white milk cows in the surrounding fields back in the early 1900s. I hope that some day someone will tackle its remodel and restore it to its glory once more.

Fortress by the Sea

Here's a painting that I recently finished of a house on Long Island Sound set high above a stone wall. I'm sure that it has a great view. I started this painting in the winter, so there was snow on the beach and some of the rocks. It is the only time of the year that you can see any part of the house.  I struggle with rocks every time that I do them, but I figure that the more I try, the better they become.

 "Fortress on the Sound" 16"x 20" oil on canvas. $440.

Lost Painting Possibly by Valazquez

A painting was recently unearthed from a storage facility at Yale University by a junior curator named John Marciari. The painting, a damaged rendition of St. Anne teaching a young Virgin Mary to read, was identified only as Anonymous, Spanish School, 17^th century. 

Marciari spent five years researching the painting, including consultations and analysis by experts, and then published his findings in the arts journal Ars in July 2010. He claimed that the painting seems to be the work of Valazquez. The story of the newly found painting hit newspapers around the world, including Spain’s leading daily newspaper, El Pais. In Spain, Valazquez holds a notoriety more renowned than all of the kings of Spain and he is considered the figure of Spain’s Golden Age, so this was big news.
There’s still a lot of controversy considering the attribution of this painting, some still not believing that it is by Valazquez, but rather an anonymous artist of the same period in Seville, Spain. The painting was on exhibit at the Yale Art Gallery for ten weeks from December 2010. Currently, the museum is trying to decide how to handle the restoration in a non-obtrusive way.
It would really be amazing if it were a true Valazquez. It will take a lot of work to refurbish the painting. A head was cut off at the top, so I can't imagine that they would be able to replace it.

Reference; Smithsonian Magazine, April 2011

Monet's Water Lilies

The Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford  is currently exhibiting a collection of paintings by Claude Monet of Water Lilies. The exhibition started on February 17 and runs until June 12, 2011. Monet began painting water lilies in the late 1800s when he purchased a piece of land adjacent to his current home and built a water garden and Japonese bridge using the existing pond.  He continued to paint the pond with the bridge and the water lilies until the time of his death in 1926. His style changed during this period, partly because of a cataract operation that helped to clear his vision. As a result, the colors that he used in his paintings became stronger and richer.  Most interesting to me were the strong, definitive brush strokes and vibrant colors of his later works that you can’t see when looking at a photo in a book or magazine. 

I attended a lecture held at the museum last week and found it quite lacking in information and rather strange. Charles Stuckey, a Monet scholar and curator for several art institutions, gave the lecture. His approach was to compare Monet’s work with other modern artists during his time, which I thought was a bit farfetched. Instead, it would have been more interesting to hear about Monet’s methods and professional progression as an artist through the years.  The exhibit is definitely worth seeing, though I must admit that I wish that there were more paintings. I read that Monet painted over 300 water lily paintings, which is astounding.