Leroy's Art Blog

The story begins with Wynn and Glenn Curry, who invited painters from the Sketch Club to spend a week at Bananas. That's their guesthouse on Vieques, the little island offshore from Puerto Rico that used to be the US Navy's firing range and now is a great tourist destination. Twelve of us accepted that invitation, and we had a fabulous time observing, learning, helping and critiquing each other, and discussing art, technique and process. Most (not including me) painted murals on the walls of the guesthouse - some fabulous creations came from that.

I want to share some of our discussions here, and post work from the other painters, too. The discussions were great, and all the painters did outstanding things. But I'll start with my own work, for this posting. Since this was an opportunity to try new things, and I'd never painted a seascape in oil before....

The ocean was beautiful and the color of the water was changing every fifteen minutes which really made it interesting to paint. I used the white scumbles in the lower left corner to set up a Z-composition so your eye could find an interesting path to follow through the painting, picking up from the hillside(s) and then sliding up along the bottom of the biggest cloud.



The rocks and the concrete railing provided a good contrast to the water and greenery. But it was tough to get those green palm trees to stand out against the green hillside behind them. I had to come back to it several times to get it to "gel." As it is, it is still a problem in the photo - the actual painting really is much better (But then, internet reproductions are always a sorry compromise when compared to the original paintings).

After those seascapes, I wanted to something that got me away from all those greens and blues. I'd been watching Doris Peltzman create wonders in her flower paintings, and thought that this might be a great way to use a different set of colors. (Doris is known for her flower paintings, and has exhibited widely - she will be showing this coming month at The Artist's Gallery in Philadelphia, and several other places.)


I got chased away while I was painting this. The flowers were growing through a fence in front of a shop, and the owner thought I might be keeping people from going in to buy things. He was unimpressed by my complimenting him on having the most beautiful flowers on the island right in front of his shop. Fortunately, I was able to finish the painting just before he sounded like he would make good on his repeated threat to call the police.

A detour for a moment, from the Artblog: I've been putting so much time into painting the walls of my place, it feels like a real accomplishment to now be entirely FINISHED, as of this past Wednesday morning. The place looks good - but very raw and blank with nothing on the walls - yet. However, after having worked so hard to patch the scars and pull out nails, even moly bolts and a raft of telephone jacks, it feels almost criminal to go ahead and immediately put in my own hooks to hang paintings! Oh well, I will get over it.

I remember the first time I visited friends in an up-scale NYC high-rise. It struck me that even in their expensive apartment, space was very limited. In my rural background a home might be shabby, but there was always almost unlimited space. Another thing back then - the apartment doors lined up along long hallways looked to me like pigeon coops, certainly no place I would want to live. Well, now here I am on the 13th floor of a building with 600 residences, and the hallway looks like this:


That hallway is so unrelentingly beige! Oh the sacrifices we must make! Fortunately, the fabulous location and access to the city advantages more than compensates for living along a pigeoncoop of a hallway. And I like the idea of walking from all that beige into the splash of color and life that I intend to create in my personal space here.

Now I am so much looking forward to getting back to using my small brushes. My next big project is HUGE. I've been asked to create a portrait of Frances E.W. Harper. Harper was a black author and poet, a member of both the 1st Unitarian and the Mother Bethel AME churches in Philadelphia, and a leader in the abolitionist and suffrage movements, b. 1825, d. 1911. There are three known photos of her, plus an engraving. I've copied the photos from the files at the Philadelphia Library Company, and now need to find out what colors and fabrics/textures she might be wearing in this photo (Please contact me if you have any ideas or input on this!):

So much has happened since I let my Artblog get all moldy from lack of use and new postings. I’ll try to catch up on things, but can’t do it all at once. Last night I was just exhaused after painting the kitchen and bedroom, so fell asleep on my new sofa about 7:00pm. Woke up about 1:30am, which was lovely - gave me a chance to upload pictures from my camera and fiddle with them.

Here’s a preview of postings I intend to make in the near future to bring things up to date:

I’ve bought and moved into a co-op in a big building smack in the center of Philadelphia, only two blocks from Rittenhouse Square. Artists, especially Conceptual and Installation artists, talk about the PROCESS as being the important part of their art. Well, I think that works for new living digs too, and I’ve been enjoying all the Process of fixing, repairing, cleaning, planning, painting, outfitting. So I’ll have to talk about this and how it will affect my work.



Then, Patricia and I were just in Puerto Rico with a dozen outstanding artists from the Phila Sketch Club, at the invitation of Wynn and Glenn Curry. They own the Bananas guesthouse on Vieques, the little island east of Puerto Rico. We spent a few days on PR, but the core of the trip was painting murals and new work in the group environment at Bananas. All that was fabulous - invigorating, exciting and motivating.






Then, I’ve been commissioned to paint a portrait of the black poet, abolitionist and civil rights activist, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (b. 1825, d. 1911). I feel honored to have this opportunity, and am in the process of deciding how I will want to execute the portrait.