Violet

Our goat, Violet, died yesterday. She gave birth Saturday to four baby does. We don't know for sure if there were complications but it appears that milk fever was the cause. It is not really a fever but a lack of calcium in the blood that causes a heart attack. My wife called to tell me the news and I left work early yesterday and buried her outside the goat pen.

Violet and Pepper were our first goats. We got them about five years ago when they were a week old. We bottle fed them. Bottle feeding makes goats very tame. Violet and Pepper were like two big, old puppy dogs. My wife would take them out in the field to graze and she would pray the rosary. These two goats became her companions. And they gave birth to some more goats and we kept some until our little goat herd is know up to 16, 15 now that Violet is gone.

My wife has taken Violet's death pretty hard. Grief is a funny thing. It is not something one every totally gets over. And the next occasion for grief is smashed into and added on to the previous grief. Like the Bruce Cockburn song-"You get bigger as you go; Memories like boats in tow."

My wife has had a lot of grief and Violet's death is a reminder of all that she has lost: a husband, a father, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews not to mention things like health, careers, friends and a few hopes and dreams.

The saints teach us that we can unit our sufferings with Christ, as Saint Pauls says in Colossians 1:24 "I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church". It is a mystery that our suffering, united to Christ can help redeem the world.

So, in some way, Violet's death and my wife's grief is a gift to the world being redeemed by Christ. May God have mercy on us all and grant us peace.

Mary and the Burning Bush

From The Burning Bush Triptych by Nicholas Froment

The prophet in the wilderness

The fire inside it was aflame

But never consumed or injured it.

The same with the Theotokos Mary

Carried the fire of Divinity

Nine months in her holy body.



Again it was said of Christ that He is a “consuming fire” (Hebrews
12:29). The fire burning inside the bush is a symbol of Christ and the
bush itself symbolizes the Virgin.

I have been pondering the symbolism of Mary, carrying the baby Jesus in her womb for nine months being like the burning bush that Moses saw.

We learn over and over again from the Old Testament that no person can see the face of God and live. As God told Moses in exodus 33:30, But He said, "You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!" To be fully in his presence is to be extinguished. It is like an ice cube before the presence of a roaring fire.

So how could Mary actually hold within herself the God/man Jesus without being consumed? God had prepared a place for Jesus in granting Mary the immaculate conception. Mary, through the redeeming grace of Jesus, was conceived without original sin and being full of grace continued to live a live free from sin. The purifying fire of God’s presence had nothing to burn away in Mary. She was a vessel prepared beforehand to receive the gift of God’s son. So like the burning burn she is aflame with God’s presence but not consumed.

May she be our example and we too become fire.

Old Etchings

As you know, we are homeschooling our daughter, who has an interest in art. Who would have guessed? We are doing two classes this semester: pen and ink and composition. My wife was rummaging around in the flat files looking for some examples to show Emma and she ran across a couple of old etchings I did in undergrad school at U.T.

I had done a lot of pen and ink drawing and it lead me to an interest in etching. I took several classes with Lee Chesney, who is a great teacher. I went on to grad school at the University of Iowa and studied printmaking. I had a difficult time getting the drift of what my main professor, Mauricio Lasansky, was trying to get me to do in the printmaking program. He thought my work was too cerebral and wanted me to work from my "gut". He was right but I couldn't work from my gut in printmaking. My work for two years was pretty dismal. I finally switched over to drawing and painting and found I was able to work the way he had been encouraging me to work. Since then I haven't done any printmaking. I guess I lost my taste for it. I haven't done much pen and ink drawing either.

The first etching is called "We Could Never Save the Whales". I suppose you could call it an environmental piece, mourning the slaughter of these most majestic animals.

The second etching is one I did of my Grandmother's house. It is really a self portrait as I appear in it four times along with the rest of my family. My family lived with my Grandmother for four years while my Dad saved up enough money to buy his own house.

These were done around 1977.

Up on the Roof

It has been a while since I have embarked on any major projects around the artfarm. When we first moved to the country 11 years ago I did project after project at a pretty furious pace. We inclosed the two car garage and sheetrocked and painted. We added a porch across the front of the ex-garage. We turned the drive way into a garden with raised beds and a fountain. I turned the old pole barn into a studio using materials I salvaged from the old cotton gin in downtown Elgin. We tore down the old stone chimney that had a leaky flu and replaced it with a huge picture window and added a wood-burning stove. We completely remodeled the kitchen, tearing out the old bar and cabinets, rerouting the A/C intake and thermostat, built a whole wall of built in cabinets and built a big island with concrete countertops. We added several gardens, a goat pen, a 13,000 gallon duck pond and cross fenced our land.

I was 43 when we moved and about 50 pounds lighter. I could work all day and come home and work in the evenings and all day on the weekends. But that was then and this is now.

We have been wanting to make one last major change (well, almost the last unless you count our desire to remodel our bathroom) to our house. We want to build a screened in porch along the east facing wall of our house . This gives the whole east side of our house shade. We also want to change the entrance to our house so that you would come in through the screened in porch. The huge picture window moves over to where the door is now. This will change the traffic pattern for the better. We can then have a good place in the corner to arrange furniture for a place to sit and have conversation.

So last spring over the break I worked on the porch for a week. I got all the posts set and the roof on. Then we entered the second hottest summer on record with one day shy of tying the record for most days over 100 degrees. Needless to say, I wasn't too enthusiastic about climbing up on the roof to put on the flashing. The flashing goes under the existing roof's shingles and overlaps the new porch roof to keep water from dripping down between the two roofs. Since we didn't get any rain this summer it wasn't a big deal to have no flashing.

So this weekend I spent about 8 hours on the roof putting on the flashing. It is not easy. The hard part is getting the flashing up underneath the existing roof. There might be an easy way to do it but if there is I don't know it. It is an awkward position to work in, down on your knees or laying on your side, trying to lift up the shingles and scoot a long piece of tin underneath it. I finally managed after a lot of skinned knuckles and fair share of choice words. After the flashing is under the roof it is just a matter of getting it all stuck down with various adhesives and screws.

Now we just have to wait for the first rain to see if it leaks. It is supposed to rain tonight so we'll see what happens. No we can plan on tearing out the entire front wall and moving around the windows and doors. I am hoping to take some time off work this fall to have a big chunk of time to do this. Once you rip out an exterior wall it is good to have enough time to get it dried in, in a hurry.

I can sure tell I am not used to doing this kind of work. I am really sore today. These old muscles are not as limber as they used to be.

how to make a painting

Images were taken during the first day I worked on this painting

Here’s how to make a painting.

First, spend 10 or 15 years learning to draw. Many problems in painting are actually problems in drawing. That is, if you are trying to paint something that is recognizable, which I always do. I have found it helps to be able to draw most things from your imagination. You have to spend a lot of time drawing from life so your imagination becomes informed. If you can help it, don’t draw from photograph; there has already been too much editing done. When you draw from life you get to say what gets left in or left out and what gets emphasized and what doesn’t. It’s amazing if you aren’t sure about the form of something how a little turn of your head will give you clarity. You can turn your head all you want and you won’t get any more clarity from a photo. It is best to know what is behind what you are drawing as well as the part you can see. It helps you to be able to build the form. The other reason for drawing from life: you have time to absorb what you are drawing with your other senses. What does the landscape smell like, what does it sound like, is it hot or cold? Do people come up and talk to you while you are drawing? Whether you like it or not all of this ends up in your drawing. Sure it’s a lot easier to spend two minutes taking a photo as opposed to sitting on a stool for an hour or so but there is no comparison in the results.
While you are learning to draw look at as much art work as you can. Avoid contemporary art. Don’t go to galleries. Make sure the art you are looking at was painted by someone at least 50 years older than you. Go to museums and look at old paintings and older paintings. If you can’t get to museums go to libraries and check out art books. Or look at art on the internet or postcards. Do sketches of the paintings you like. Figure out how the artists gets your eye to move around the painting. Different artists do this in different ways. Analyze how they use color and line and texture and lighting. The reason museums are best is because scale and texture can’t be reproduced and that is an important part of painting. Subtleties of color can’t be reproduced either. Don’t restrict yourself to a certain period. Look at all periods and see what you respond to. This is how you create your own style by borrowing something from the middle ages, something from cubism, something from one artist and something from another. You put them into the blender that is you own creativity and eventually you have your own style. It is not something you can force but something that will happen naturally as you discover what you respond to in art that has come before. Everybody is standing on somebody else’s shoulders so don’t think it is wrong to beg, borrow and steal from the past. That is how it’s done. If anything comes full blown out of your subconscious unaided by the art of the past it’s pretty much going to be crap.
Now you have to have an idea. All art starts in you head. It is best to not have the idea the same day you want to start your painting. Have your ideas six months before you want to start painting and put it in your brain hopper and turn the hopper on. Let the idea bounce around. Pretty soon another idea will pop into your head and stick to the first idea. You’ll be washing the dishes or mowing the grass or driving to work and an idea will pop into your head. Put it in the hopper. While you spend time letting ideas pop into your head look at other paintings by artist who have had similar ideas as yours. No, you are not the only one to have had this idea before. Most art is a conversation with art of the past. You have to become part of the conversation. That is why you need to spend so much time looking at the art of the past. Let their solutions to the idea into your hopper and let them bounce around with your accumulating ideas. Pretty soon you’ll have a pretty complete idea and the idea will feel a certain way.
Now get out your sketch book and do some thumbnail sketches. Don’t try to do a complete drawing of your idea. Just get the basic elements down and try out various configurations and formats. Is you idea a square or a rectangle? Is it vertical or horizontal? Is it huge or tiny? Or something in between? Once you have spent some time doing thumbnails, one will begin to feel right. Once you have settled on the shape and size you are ready to get your canvas.
Once you have your canvas you are ready to paint. Decide on your palatte. This is an individual preference and varies from artist to artist. I use the following colors: Cadmium red dark, cadmium red light, cadmium orange, cadmium yellow, Pthalo green, Pthalo blue, ultramarine blue, cerulean blue, diozazine purple, magenta, black and white. You will also need some medium. I use a mixture of 1/3 linseed oil, 1/3 damar varnish and 1/3 turpentine.


Start with a light color like yellow and sketch in your idea. Once you have your idea sketched out start blocking in big areas of color using nothing but turpentine as a medium. Always go by the lean to fat rule: the first layers of paint have more turpentine and less oil. Successive layers have more oil. This keeps the painting from cracking as it dries. Once you finish this layer it will look great, fresh and exciting but unfinished. This part is always so invigorating; the start of a new painting!
At this point in your painting use your intuition. Do what feels right. Let it flow and don’t think too much about what you are doing. Just get your initial idea down on the canvas. You will get in the groove and it will feel great. After several hours the whole canvas should be covered with paint. You are not trying to finish one part before another. The whole painting should have the same level of finish all the time. It is similar to building a house. You don’t start the foundation of the kitchen put up the walls and install the cabinets and appliances and then do the foundation of a bedroom. The whole house comes up at the same time, first the foundation then the studs, then the roof, etc. You get the idea. The painting is the same way. This is a fun way to paint and the painting remains interesting during the entire process.
When I first started painting I did a very complete drawing, made a grid on the drawing and proportional grrid on the canvas and transferred the drawing to the canvas. I started painting at the upper left finishing each part as I went along until I reached the bottom right corner and then I was finished. That way of painting works but is incredibly boring. It is like doing a paint by number. Don’t do it.

Continue working on your painting building up another layer adding some shading and tonality. Once you have got your painting’s second layer finished it will look pretty crappy. You’ll think, “What was I thinking, this is terrible. How can I ever finish this and make it feel like my initial idea?” Now the thing is, not to worry. This is normal and every painting has to pass through this phase. Kind a of like when the cute kid hits the awkward, gangly adolescent stage. They'll eventually turn pretty but it takes a while.
Now is the time to stop using you intuition and begin analyzing. Remember all those paintings you spent time looking at? Now is the time to remember all you learned. It is your job as the artist to be in charge of how the viewer looks at your painting. You have to decide how his eye will move around your painting. What will he look at first, where will that lead him next and so on until he is back where he started. There are many ways to do this. It is your job to figure out how to make the viewers eye travel around this particular painting. This is not easy and this is where most artists give up. It is easy to start a painting but very difficult to finish one. If you can’t get past this middle step you are doomed. So be analytical. Step back from your painting and close your eyes. Imagine a blank canvas then open your eyes.

Where did you look first? Be conscious of how you eye moves around the painting. Does your eye get stuck somewhere? If so that is bad. You have to figure out how to keep the eye moving. These are all problems of composition. If you have analyzed enough paintings you will be able to analyze the painting you are working on and get it to a successful conclusion.

finished painting: The Holy Family

It is also helpful if someone else who has a trained eye can look at your painting in progress and tell you how they look at the painting. Most people can’t do this. When a person looks at a painting and the painting is successful their eye moves around the painting in a pleasurable way without them being aware of it. People only become aware of it if they take the time to be analytical about painting and most people don’t. So spend a lot of time getting this part of the painting right. Your painting should still be pretty general without details because you are moving stuff around and changing shapes and tones and colors to get your eye to move the way you want it to.

Once you are convinced that the composition is working then you can begin to add more details and finish the painting. Be sure you are aware of things like consistent lighting, and the temperature of colors, interesting textures, and such. When you are done your painting should embody the idea and feeling you initially had. It will in a very real sense be the incarnation of your beginning idea. If the painting has fulfilled the original concept in its form then you have succeeded.

Some paintings go easier than others and it is usually that middle section that is longer or shorter. In my experience the longer and harder the middle part is, the better the painting is, if it can be resolved successfully. Not all paintings can and those that can’t should get thrown in the trash heap.

Pope hosts a meeting of artists

Pope Benedict is hosting a meeting with 500 artists in the Sistine Chapel on November 21, 2009.

Pope Seeks to Restore Alliance between Art and Faith

Pope Benedict XVI hopes to establish a dialogue towards a new and "fruitful alliance" between “art and the Church”

"Ideally the Pope is taking the plunge in launching the dialogue. How will the artists respond? The should begin to respond through their works. Then we would hope to encourage a certain resonance for these works within their national communities".

The hardest part was the selection of artists who will meet the Holy Father. The choice – said Archbishop Ravasi - was made with particular attention to the artistic level achieved, taking into account the different geographical and cultural contexts.

I guess my invitation got lost in the mail.

New painting: Knock, Knock

click on the image for a bigger version

I finished the painting I have been working on. A fellow blogger, Paul Nielson, made a post a while back about a painting by Warner Sallman, Christ Knocking at the Hearts Door. He didn't think it was a very good painting. Sallman actually got his idea from Holman Hunt who had done a painting The Light of the World. So I decided I would see if I could make a better painting than Sallman's. Both of these paintings and mine as well are inspired by a scripture from the book of Revelation. St. John tells of how Jesus is going to spit out those believers who are not hot or cold but are lukewarm. Then the famous passage: Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.

So my idea for the painting is to have Jesus knocking at the door of a house. The people in side are entertaining themselves, watching TV, exercising and listening to music but they are all doing it in isolation from each other. Did they hear the knock over the noise of their lives. Will they pause, or turn off the ipod long enough to see if there is someone at the door? The border is made up of fast food, except for the bread and wine of the eucharist on a background of lime green. Jesus also has bread and wine in his hand and is ready to share himself in the eucharist with those are are willing. Paul made the good point that this bible verse is not an evangelistic verse aimed at non-believers but at believers who have lost their first love. To this end I have included in the house two paintings, one of Warner Sallman's famous head of Jesus and the other hanging over the sofa a landscape by "Christian" artist, Thomas Kincaide, the painter of lite.

More Text: The Last Judgment

I am continuing to post descriptions of my paintings on my blog as I add them to my web page. Below is the text for The Last Judgment. If you want to see a larger image of this painting go here. If you click on that image you can see details.

The Last Judgment has been a popular theme in Christian art which artists including, Michelangelo, Vander Weden, Van Eyk, and Fra Angelico have pursued. Many of the symbols used in the Last Judgment are reoccurring, such as the saved on the right hand of God and the damned on the left, St. Michael with scales and the newly redeemed emerging naked from their grave to receive the white robes and palm branches.

While including these symbols and others I have also tried to update the subject by including a modern cityscape. In the cityscape are the ubiquitous advertising signs of urban life. These are signs of our overriding desire for security, comfort and convenience: Easy-Fast-Cheap-Pay Later-You Deserve More-Eat-Drink-Be Merry as well as the universal Wal-Mart and McDonalds signs.

The unmarked building in the foreground is an abortion clinic. On the wall is a sign exhorting people to have safe sex. Also on the wall is graffiti that says Kyrie Eleison. People, both men and women, fathers and mothers, file in pregnant and file out with their arms loaded with goodies. The pipes protruding from the clinic deliver the aborted babies into the maw of Moloch. As someone once said there is no sacrifice without blood. The sacrifice we make for our luxurious lifestyles of consumerism is the cost of the unborn, nearly 50 million since 1973. As the people leave the clinic they are blinded by the goods they are carrying and fall off the path into the fires of hell.

Above the clinic is a billboard of Michael the archangel. Instead of dressing him as a medieval knight, I have him attired as a contemporary army man but his camouflage is flames of fire (as angels are often described as fiery beings). Michael is shown dispatching the old serpent, the devil with his spear.

Beneath the maw of Moloch emerge the resurrected children taken in abortion. St. Thomas Aquinas suggests that in heaven everyone will be 33 years old, the age of Jesus when he died so everyone is young. They emerge naked as traditional iconography dictates. They wind up the stairs toward heaven pausing to acquire the white robe of the martyr and the palm branch, another symbol of martyrdom.

At the top of the painting Jesus is shown as the king of heaven with his mother next to him, the queen of heaven. They are surrounded by the saints and angels engulfed in a multitude of rainbow prisms as they are partaking in the heavenly light.

Surrounding Jesus feet, which rest on an orb, are the four living creatures.

This painting is the largest one I have done in a while: 8’x5’. It is acrylic on canvas.

More text

I had lunch with my friend Adam the other day. We were talking about how to promote my art work. He is more interested in marketing than I am but we had a good chat. One thing came out of our talk: while I have a lot of images of my work on my web page, I do not have much of anything at all in the way of a text description of the paintings. For people who are familiar with me and my work, my web page is easy to find but if someone is just searching for a particular image of something unless they get lucky and enter the title of the image into a search engine the chances of finding my work is slim to none. So, I am going to add a text descriptions of my paintings on my web page over the next few months. I thought I might initially post them here as well. Below is the first one I have done for the older painting, Easter Morning.



The title of this painting gives the subject matter away. But rather than try to paint a literal resurrection I tried to paint how the resurrection might feel. I love flowers and zinnias are so bright and colorful, gaudy in their exuberance. The brilliant flowers against the dark sky explode like fireworks, like resurrection. Wouldn’t it make sense to set of fireworks at the end of Easter Vigil?

The table is covered with a cloth, divided up into squares that are the colors of Easter Eggs. On the table is the bread and wine, the Eucharist which is the presence of Christ with us, the resurrected Christ, body and blood, present in the bread and wine. It is not a mere symbol but the reality of the resurrection.

Behind the table is a modern cityscape. This brings the event of the resurrection into the present. It was not just a historical event. The risen Christ is here, in our city, in our town.

On the opposite side of the painting are three houses over which hang three moons, representing the three days Jesus was in the grave. In front of the houses are some strange animal topiary and a man with an Easter basket. This is a reminder that grace perfects nature and what the pagans new about fertility, spring, rabbits, eggs and new life are all signs in nature that point to the greater truth of new life, the new life of the resurrection.

Finally, on the vase is a depiction of Jonah being spit out by the large fish that had swallowed him three days earlier, one of the old testament stories that pre-figure the resurrection. This is one of the oldest images found in Christian art and can be seen on the wall of the catacombs and on funerary carvings of the 3rd century.

The composition is a circular one, which is the only explanation I can come up with for the airplane in the corner. The composition just seemed to need something in that corner. An airplane filled the bill but I can’t really say what that has to do with the theme of the painting, so in that sense might be considered less than optimal.