Everything seems backwards

Garrrrr
The cover and a sample page from one of my books. Testimonials indicate that it is addictive to kids of a certain age. If you are interested an audio file of the author reading a letter entry might be available on request.

If you liked the teapot, then here...

Another lovely item, the same beautiful white porcelainy structure, purchased from the Northern Lights Fred Meyer, and hand-painted and baked in the oven until done.

Stands about seven inches high at the spout.

The Ramp looms to the left, the Wedge in the middle

If one were to look closely at this image, there would be the shadows of two huskies, rooting around in the foreground. They were there. Powerline Pass, neglected for some reason by landscape painters, as far as I can tell. Still a spectacular place, craggy, snowy, bears, moose, big cats, avalanches, all that stuff. A guy could give tours there and have satisfied customers.

Don't steal my lemur

gummy bears come from haribo
lemurs from antananarivo
swedish fish come from sweden
and apples from eden
and they'd all make a perfect placebo

Try this, Jay. It's easy

Sugar butter apples (and flour)
Spread a cup of sugar in a nine inch cast iron frying pan, then cut one stick of unsalted butter in thin square slices and lay them over the sugar.

Peel and core the apples leaving them otherwise whole. Cut a slice off the bottom to make a flat base, then cut the whole fruit in half height-wise. Place the apple halves in the pan, with the flat side vertical and facing to the right. (I like the right, but you could use the left.) When you have peeld, cored and cut enough apples they will make a ring in yo pan, leaving a whole in the middle, which will take another one to two apples peeled, cored, etc. Make sure they are snug against one another.

Preheat the oven to 350. Put the pan on a burner and set the heat to medium low. The sugar and butter will begin to melt momentarily, and after some minutes the whole thing will begin to bubble. The higher the heat the more the bubble, so that's up to you.

Every few minutes, after the sugar and butter has liquified, use a baster to baste the apples. Turn the heat up so that the bubbles are a little faster, and after a while the liquid will become thicker and darker. When the apples have softened through, so that you can poke a paring knife through them with minimal resistance, they are done.

You should in the meantime, put one and a half cups of flour in a decent sized bowl, and using a paring knife, chip in a stick off unsalted butter, put your clean hands in the bowl and squish the flour and butter together until all the butter has been pinched into pieces smaller than you put in in the first place.

Get a half cup of cool water, add a tablespoon of sugar and a teaspoon of salt, and dissolve them. Dump the whole thing in the flour sugar mix and stir it with a wooden spoon. (Wooden spoons are more fun.) Gather it into a ball, put it on a floured counter, flour your rolling pin or wine bottle, and roll it out.

When the rolled out crust is a little bigger than the nine inch frying pan, take the pan off the burner, lay the crust over the apples and fold back any extra to build up the edge. Put the thing in the preheated oven. When the crust turns golden brown, it is done. Take it out.

Get ready with your plate that is bigger than the pan. Put the pan on a heat proof surface, put the plate face down over it, put oven mitts on both your hands, grab the handle firmly with one, and press the plate firmly with the other, lifting both in front of you. Then, with one quick and fearless motion, flip the thing 180 degress, so that the top is now the bottom. The quicker the better. The pan should come off and leave a lovely patterned apple tart tatin.

And... a view from gresham over the river

Portland
an attempt to nail the colorful heart of the city in a painting we brought back from the above. the rim of blue tags it as water-close, with the red of a rose. actually, it just seems to give off a friendly big city atmosphere, something, surprisingly, a guy who loves Alaska can miss sometimes. See the paris below.

acrylic 30x40 edge to edge on papaer board

November in Portland's suburbs

in the beginning of reading Bohumil Hrabal. connections to chekhov, writing as a miniaturist (my own interpretation) where one detail (or like Hemingway, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Harry Potter) tells all.

This is a painting of Powell Butte in Gresham, Oregon. Hopefully compelling.

posts will being to make more sense shortly. Probably.

Acrylic on 30x40 paper

The Cat needs to title his blogger blog

My inaugural blogpost, having nothing to do with the visual arts, except the P.S.

It's one of those muggy late Spring days, but it's only March 3rd, so by definition, it's got to be late winter. 81 out, cloudy, with none of the promised wind so it just sort of sits there. Not like down at Mr. Watson's Place, of course, nonetheless unnerving. I'm working through about 150 pages of material about "folklore" and so far have decided that the Ravens represent "a folk" in the sense that we share certain traits like language, customs, in-group knowledge, and unified interests. Not sure why that's important, but maybe it'll function as a way to approach the next Ravenread, Zuleika Dobson. But there it is. My cat, one of my four cats, is lying here on the desk with its intestinal tract gurgling. I'm headed outside for a Coke and more reading, but perhaps later will head down to Mickey D's for a McCafe mocha.

El Gato Magnifico (EGM) of the Tucson Caldwells, host to multiple me-painter projects, dating back to when he was unknown.

P.S. I think Jason probably did the right thing, dumping Melissa for Molly, but heavens, Melissa is one nice (and hot) chick. She won't be on the market long.

A multitude of snapshots

NNE of the Champ de Mars
One of the pictures we brought back with us from Paris.

Watercolor on 30x40 rag paper

An unexpected nexus, although lots of people retire here

dr caldwell of the tucson caldwells has this hanging in the hallway of his beautiful tucsonian ranch. outside there was a rugose cactus, which I have heard has died since. the painting, a challenging one (the interesting painting) should still hang.

He also is in possession of the only legitimate digitally printed facsimile. These things are rare.

actual size somewhere around an overwhelming 5 feet wide (or long, as we like to say)

The heart of me painter: the ten dollar commission.

• In the above, the first drawing would costs $10.00 (you say: draw me a santa claus with a pointy hat);
• The second still costs $10.00 because anyone can change the lines if they have the software;
• The third costs an additional $10.00 because it takes time to color.

Each is transmitted in PDF format and is editable.
For more info see parent site: mepainter.com

It was white when I bought it

Bought Art
another project in-work. in the spirit of recart, hand-painted china from Fred Meyer. White pottery as paper, it is like holding a 3d grid in your hands, as you turn it, applying the paint. Life imitating software.

Trapeziodal Eyes...

Titularismatics
another example of the idea (giant miniaturism? naming scheme is tending to mnemonism.) The biggest problem is getting her (the wife) to hold still for you. She will read for hours but squirms in slow motion.

We all know posing is hard work.

Everything you paint looks like your wife to you

Little Pictures
beginning a new project. a series of large miniatures, where detail has been painted like background, or as if you yourself were a macro lens for painting.

had painted a woman's torso, and photographed it to exp with cropping, and realized that the detail was more intriguing. so won't waste time putting down what everyone knows already, i.e., she has a chin, or the top of a head. ten pp of painting about someone's hands is not interesting, in this case...