End of a Local Era

 My barber has closed his shop.  It's the end of a 63-year era here in my little town.  It's an example of what's happening everywhere.

I've been going to Tim's shop for about 20 years.  He ran a one-man barbershop that his father established 63 years ago.  It was very much a Norman Rockwell place.  It was a small storefront in a 100-year-old string of buildings on Main Street in Mars Hill.  There was a barber pole out front, of course, and the "Mars Hill Barbershop" was hand-painted on the front window.  Inside, there were two barber chairs, although one of them hadn't been used in all the time I went there, and looked like it hadn't been used for a few decades prior to that.  His German Shepherd was the welcoming committee and receptionist.  If you got on the dog's good side, you were good forever, and everybody got on the dog's good side as long as you liked dogs.  

Tim knew everybody in a 10-mile radius.  He'd grown up in Mars Hill and worked alongside his father in the shop until the older man retired.  Tim took it over and made no changes whatsoever.  Well, except that might have been when it went from a 2-chair operation to a 1-chair.  Tim is very funny and very personable.  If you want to know what's going on in the neighborhood, you went to get a haircut at Tim's.  You'd sit in the ancient waiting chairs, along with however many other guys were there, and joined in the conversation.  Everybody pitched in.  It might be about the mystery construction project down by the interstate, or Jimmy Smith's herd of cows needing haybales, or Frank's parents in the local nursing home (an X-rated and hilarious discussion if there ever was one).  There was no sitting there and reading magazines, even though there were plenty, all from ten years ago.  

But the number of people going to Tim's has been slowly dropping for years.  Older guys died off and fewer younger ones came.  Almost all the college boys went to styling salons down in Weaverville or Asheville.  Tim got a part-time job at a big-box store to help pay the bills.  As the barber business slowed, he increased his hours at the big-box.  And this year, when the rent went up significantly, he threw in the towel and retired.  And 63 years of barbering in Mars Hill came to an end.

I knew it was coming, but last week I went in to get a haircut and the store wasn't there anymore.  Everything inside was gone, along with the barber pole and bench outside.  A sign on the window announced the closure.  It was so sad to see.  So I made an appointment at a place down in Weaverville.  It's a franchise operation, brightly lit, lots of chairs and ladies cutting hair.  Everybody waiting was staring at their phones and nobody was talking.  Well, I was, anyway, once I got in the chair, and the lady cutting my hair seemed to be glad to have somebody to talk to.  And, of course, it was a decent haircut at a decent price.

So another old neighborly business is gone, replaced by an anonymous franchise operation.  Progress?  No.

Car Stuff

 Now for something completely different ...

Last September, while driving on the interstate, we ran over a piece of metal.  It banged up the passenger door pretty badly and ripped several pieces of trim off the side.  Fortunately, there was no structural damage and we could continue to drive the car with no problems.  Unfortunately, parts and shipping availability meant that it was five months before the shop had everything they needed to do the repairs.  We dropped the car off last week and picked up a rental. I thought we got lucky: they had a Mini Cooper on the lot.  Very cool!  I'd never driven one before.  I signed the papers and off I went.

I hated it.

As it turns out, Minis have the most unintuitive and annoying controls you can imagine.  Things you'd expect to be manual are electrical, and things you'd expect to be electrical are manual.  The shift lever doesn't operate the way any other shift lever does.  The infotainment system requires multiple button punches just to get beyond the "don't operate this while you're driving" alerts.  Brakes are grabby.  The engine shuts down when the car is stopped, then starts up again as soon as you put your foot on the gas, meaning there's a slight delay between your foot and actual movement, which could be critical in squeezing into traffic.  The "fasten your seatbelt" alarm is particularly annoying.  The door has a tinny sound when it's pulled closed.  

This was a Mini Cooper Countryman, which meant it was like a Mini that ballooned in size.  It's way bigger than a Mini should be.  It's much taller than my Mazda 3 and is more like a mid-sized Subaru.  It's a Massive Mini.  It even feels top-heavy in corners.  It just feels ... wrong.  It's not mini at all.

The good points?  It handles like a go kart and is a gas miser.  

I might have liked a real Mini, especially one with a stick shift, and one that didn't shut off the engine at stoplights.  I might've been able to put up with all the other annoyances.  But all together, no.  My Mazda is an infinitely better car.  And the next time I need a rental, I'll go for anything else.

First Wedding Painting of 2022

 

My new year started off with a bang, studio-wise.  I had my first wedding of the year on New Year's Day.  This was an older couple who got married at the Diana venue on the Biltmore Estate.  They're quite a lovely couple.  He is very distinguished and she reminds me of Dolly Parton, in a very good way: small, voluptuous, big blonde hair, and a very definite (and very positive) personality.  They're quite a lot of fun to be around.  

New Year's Day around here is pretty iffy, but we lucked out with temperatures in the upper 60's, of all things.  The bride, though, liked the idea of snow on the ground, and since this is a painting and not a photograph, that's no problem at all.  The most important thing that they wanted me to capture was the connection between them.  And I think I did.  It's hard to see on the small image here, but if you click on it, it will show you a larger version.

One thing that I did NOT do this time was paint at the reception.  There wasn't a "reception" per se, rather a dinner for about 20 people in the Private Dining Room at the Inn on Biltmore.  With the omicron covid variant spreading like wildfire, I did not feel comfortable being in a small room with a lot of unmasked people.  Instead, I offered a small price reduction to the couple since they and their guests wouldn't be able to see the painting get started, to which they readily agreed. 

And it was a good thing, too.  This painting had a couple of false starts.  Getting the sizes and proportions right was, for some reason, difficult.  My first block-in had the couple too small, so I had to rework them the next day.  Then there were a lot of little technical issues, the kind that most people would never see but would bug the hell out of me.  They're fixed now.  Actually, I'm very happy with the way this one turned out.  The couple will be back in town soon to retrieve it personally.

Now I'm working on a large and complicated painting for my upcoming solo exhibition.  I think the painting is pretty well started.  Now I have to go over every square inch and bring it up to a high level of finish.  That'll take a while and will be the subject of my next post.

End of the Year Review

 Well, if you're reading this, you and I managed to survive 2021.  Don't know about you, but I'm more or less intact.  It wasn't all that bad of a year, frankly.  I've had worse.  All four years of the Trump presidency, for example.  

I have several things I do to keep myself busy.  I'm an artist doing both commissioned paintings as well as my own stuff.  I manage the art gallery for Mars Hill University.  And I write proposals for firms seeking federal contracts.  Quick recaps, starting with the last:

This was not a busy year in the proposal-writing field.  It started with a big effort for a company I've worked with off and on, in several different roles, for over ten years.  We submitted an outstanding proposal that I'm proud to have been a part of.  Of course, it's now hung up in protests that may or may not be resolved in the next six months.  Since then, this line of work has been very quiet.  I've done a few very small proposals, some of which have been successful, but it has not taken a significant bit of my time.

The university's art gallery has continued to be a fun sideline.  We've had several really great exhibitions this year.  Covid has meant that we can't have receptions, which is annoying, but the quality of the shows was generally high.  I had an unfortunate experience with one artist who cancelled out of her show TWO DAYS before we were supposed to hang it.  Long story there, but frankly, I was relieved, and we had somebody else who stepped up and mounted a good show in her place.  Right now, I'm planning the schedule for the 2022-23 school year.  I'm watching out for any of the red flags that our problem child this year showed.

The studio has been my primary source of activity this year.  I completed 24 oil paintings, of which nine were weddings, one was another commission, and 14 were my own works.  Some of those were done for an upcoming exhibition, some were experiments, and I have no idea where a few of them came from.  I also did nine charcoal and pastel figurative works, of which two were commissioned portraits.  I really enjoy working in charcoal and pastel, but spent more time in oils this year.  

Speaking of charcoal and pastel figurative works, I have some of them in an art gallery now.  The Mars Landing Galleries is a brand-new fine art gallery here in Mars Hill.  The owner, Miryam Rojas, has created a really good gallery with a lot of very strong work, despite including my pieces.  I'm really happy to be included in this stable of great artists.

One thing I have not been able to do is re-start my life drawing sessions.  I was considering it a couple of times, but both times the covid infection rate suddenly shot up.  No sense taking chances.  

Just over the last few weeks, I've been playing around with photography.  I came across a photographer working in black and white who does really stunning figurative work.  My studio computer has thousands of reference photos taken from model sessions, weddings, landscapes, and lots of other subjects.  So I've been searching through them for those that have some kind of potential, stripping the color out, cropping, and playing with the lighting.  It has been a lot of fun and I've gotten some cool images.  Here's one:

So what's up for the new year?  Well, the wedding painting business is still going strong.  I'm fully booked for 2022 with nine commissions.  The first one is tomorrow: a New Year's Day event at the Biltmore.  It's very small, the ceremony will be outside, and I am not going to be at the reception, so it looks pretty safe.  The next wedding will be in May.  Fingers crossed, covid won't be as rampant as now.  

I have a solo exhibition set for August at the Pink Dog in Asheville.  The theme of the show is a cautionary tale of what might be in our future if we don't get our collective acts together politically, economically, ecologically, and socially.  Yeah, it's a bit of a "Debbie Downer" topic, but so what.  

So at the end of a pretty stressful year, I'm happy to still be here and ready for whatever comes next.  I hope you are, too.

End of the 2021 Wedding Season

 My 2021 wedding season is over.  I've finished three paintings in the past few weeks.  Two have been delivered and the third will go out tomorrow. They weren't finished in the order started, though, due to one start-over and one paint-drying issue.  So here they are in the order started.

A couple of posts ago, I showed an image of a blank canvas.  This was a painting that I started at the event and then scrubbed out the next day in the studio.  That happens occasionally.  So here's how the painting eventually turned out (click on the images to see a larger version):

The couple wanted their first dance and their dogs.  This was a Biltmore wedding and reception, so they were under a huge clear tent.  When I started this one over, I flipped it to a vertical orientation, stripped the tent architecture down to something more visually attractive, eliminated all the distracting furniture and people, and brought in their three dogs.  This turned out very different from most of my paintings.  It was delivered to them last week.

The second painting was one started at The Ridge, which is in the mountains northwest of Asheville.  Heck, it's northwest of Marshall, so it's way out there.  This couple was more specific: they wanted the first dance, with the doors open, looking out at the mountains, under the chandelier.  This one felt good, right from the beginning.  As with the Biltmore painting, I simplified the room's architecture to keep the attention focused on the couple and the things that were important to them.  

Oil paints dry at different rates.  Some, like burnt umber, dry overnight.  Whites are the worst and that was the case here: some of the whites took way over a week to get dry to the touch.  This is the painting that's going out tomorrow.

The final painting of the year was started at the Asheville Country Club.  I'd never been there before and it turned out to be a really nice venue.  On the other hand, I have created a painting for the bride before.  She's a real joy to work with: enthusiastic, great sense of humor, and knows what she wants.  In this case, she wanted the first dance, both families, the fall colors seen through the windows, and the chandelier and twinkle lights.  

This was another painting that was working right from the get-go.  Things fell into place quickly and I was very happy with it by the end of the night.  There was a guest table right next to me and it turns out that one of the ladies was taking and posting photos of the painting development the whole evening.  Before he left, one of the guys said "we had the best seats in the house!".  Love getting comments like that.  This couple came to the studio yesterday to pick up their painting.  I was going to get a photo of them but we got to talking and I totally forgot.

So now there's a break before the next wedding painting.  I'll be working on some paintings for an exhibition at Pink Dog Creative in Asheville in a few months.  I've got a lot of work to do!

What Kinda Deer Is That?

 

We had an unusual visitor to the back yard yesterday.  This is a young male whitetail deer with very unusual coloring.  It's called a piebald - no idea where that name came from, but there ya go.  Very rare, a bit more common (supposedly) than pure albino.  We're hoping the guy keeps coming around.

Not Every Wedding Painting Goes Smoothly

 As the title of this post says, not every wedding painting goes smoothly.  A couple of weeks ago, I started a new painting at a reception.  Lots of people came by and loved the painting, took lots of photos that are presumably posted in Instagram, Facebook, and who knows what other social media platforms.  I had nothing but positive comments.  And the next day in the studio, I wiped it all off.  

The first start just didn't feel right.  It didn't feel balanced and it didn't feel connected to the couple.  Continuing with it is like like trying to make a wrecked car look showroom fresh.  So I started over from scratch.  The requirements: they wanted it to show the first dance, and they wanted their dogs in it.  

After a good bit of work, it's done, and here's what it looks like now:

 This is quite a bit different from both the first try and from almost all the other wedding paintings I've done.  For one, it's in a vertical (portrait) orientation, rather than my usual horizontal (landscape) setup.  The architecture is greatly simplified: in reality, it was a tent with a white support structure covered with clear plastic, while mine has half the number of supports.  I cleared out all the furniture since it didn't add anything, changed the color of the carpet from blue to warm brown, and eliminated other people to keep the focus on the couple.  The hanging flowers were there, I just re-positioned them because that's what painters can do.  The dogs, of course, were not really in the tent, but they're the couple's "children" so they're an important part.

So this one is done.  I started a new painting last night (Saturday).  This one felt pretty good from the very beginning.  This one also is showing just the couple.  Here's how it looked at the end of the reception:

When the bride breaks down in tears when she sees the painting at the end of the reception, it usually means either (a) she loves it, (b) she hates it, or (c) she's drunk.  In this case, she loved it.  I love it when people react so strongly to one of my paintings!  This, of course, has a long way to go and I'll post the completed painting after they approve it.

Upcoming Exhibition

 Six of my small portraits from Iraq will be in an exhibition of art by veterans in a couple of weeks.  "Through Their Eyes" showcases art by veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.  One of my paintings, "Iraqi Guard" is shown in the ad.  The exhibition will be in the Bridgewater Commons mall, in Bridgewater, NJ, from November 6-13.  They'll have an opening reception on the 6th at 4 pm.  If you're in the area, go see it!

Latest Wedding Painting

 

Morgan and Major

My most recently finished wedding painting is about to go to the clients.  Morgan (the bride) and Major (the groom) were married at the Biltmore and had their reception under a huge tent on the side terrace of the big house.  They wanted their painting to show their first dance and some key family members.  

This painting was a bit of a challenge, primarily due to the size of the painting.  It's the largest wedding painting I've done at 36"x48".  That let me do some things differently and I took advantage of it.  As a result, I wound up doing much more to it than normally, simply because I could, and that was fun.  It also meant that it took two months to finish it up.  Okay, so about two weeks of that time was spent on vacation in Massachusetts, but still ...  So click on the image to see a larger version of it and tell me what you think.

Now I need to get it to the couple, along with their notecards with the image of the painting printed on the front.  I'm looking to do that later this week.  Meanwhile, I've got another commission underway in the studio, another of my own paintings underway, and I need to do another couple of paintings for the upcoming show in the spring.  Oh, and I need to come up with a title for the show.  Oh, and I need to finish up the current round of yardwork to keep my spousal unit happy.  

Vacation

 We've been on vacation for the past couple of weeks.  One of J's friends from way way back came out to visit and we all three went up to Cape Cod.  None of us had ever been there and it was on J's bucket list.  We drove up in two long days in the car.  We'd rented a house in West Yarmouth, which is near Hyannis on the southern side of the Cape.  Mostly, we wandered and let unexpected discoveries guide our actions.  That's how we wound up on a long scenic drive that led us first to Brax Landing (an outstanding restaurant) and then on to Provincetown, out at the northern end of the Cape.  Another day, we discovered Main Street in Hyannis where J and her friend browsed all the shops.  We found another outstanding restaurant there, the Anejo, a Mexican place under a 250-year-old beech tree.  We also went out to Martha's Vineyard for an enjoyable afternoon of wandering around aimlessly.  Then it was two days of driving to get home.  

Now it's time to play catch-up.  I have a wedding painting in process, an art exhibition at Mars Hill University to swap out, a yard to mow, a writeup to get done, and three potential painting clients to talk with.  Time to get busy.

End of an Era

 Yesterday, the last US military plane with the last load of military members and Afghan civilians left Kabul.  Our mission there is officially done after 20 years.  So why am I so down?  I think it's because leaving was the right thing to do, but it was done in the worst possible way.

As I stated in a previous posting, we were propping up a government that was doomed to fail no matter what we did.  The Afghan government was a kleptocracy that did not have much support from its people, who were ambivalent about it at best.  Despite all the assistance, training, and funding that we and the international community provided, we couldn't get it to do the right thing.  

Individual people, both within and outside the government, were wonderful.  Brave women stood up to advance the cause of women.  The Afghan Army and police forces took unbelievable losses in their fight against the Taliban and individual soldiers were as brave and effective as any US soldier.  I saw that myself in Kandahar.  There were people inside the government doing their best to do what was right: provide services, root out corruption, and make Afghanistan a better place.  Local leaders, despite being uneducated, could negotiate contracts as well as any Fortune 500 executive.  

But there was no leadership glue to hold the country together.  The Taliban, however, had a mission and thousands of loyal adherents. After Trump signed the withdrawal agreement, it was only a matter of time.  Everybody knew it.  The speed of the government's collapse, though, took everybody by surprise.  In my last post on this topic, the "experts" were thinking it would take 90 days.  I said it would be less than 30.  In reality, it was about 48 hours.  

The US military response was truly amazing.  From nothing, our military created a humanitarian airlift that pulled over 123,000 people out of the country in just over two weeks.  It was ugly in the beginning, but our troops quickly stood up an efficient, effective, multi-national effort.  

Parts of the State Department did a fantastic job as well.  All those Afghan evacuees had to go somewhere, and the State Department found nations in the region and elsewhere that agreed to take them.  That's not a small accomplishment.  

Other parts of this story are really ugly.  The ISIS-K attack on the airport that killed 13 of our troops and 170 Afghans, as well as wounding over 200 more, was the low point.  Another low point is the State Department's handling of the Special Immigrant Visas for those Afghans who worked with us over the past 20 years.  As I've said for years, the State Department never wanted to do SIVs and slow-rolled them from the outset.  The rationale was that rewarding capable Afghans for their service by bringing them out of Afghanistan undermined the mission.  Essentially, we were showing that we had no faith that the Afghan government would succeed.  I understand that rationale, but don't like it.  And by continuing to slow-roll visa processing even after Trump signed the withdrawal agreement, the State Department consular service left thousands of people to fend for themselves.  I'd like to take the whole State Department Consular Service, dump them in Kandahar, and let them find their own way home.

Today there's a photo making the rounds on Facebook of a bunch of military working dogs who were left in their cages at the Kabul airport.  Leaving our dogs in the airport is horrifying.  But I wouldn't want to be the individual who had to make that decision.  You've got one last plane, so do you take a bunch of Afghan women and children, or dogs?  There's no room for both.  It's a bad decision, either way.

So now we're out.  The Taliban has what they wanted: control of the country.  Now it's their turn to run it.  I don't think the Taliban will be quite as brutal as before.  Afghanistan is a "Go Fund Me" country that survives on international donations, which will be hard to come by if they don't pay at least some attention to international norms.  Well, that's the hope, anyway.  The Taliban will do what they damn well please.  And one of the things they'll have to deal with is ISIS-K.  Good luck with that.

Was it worth it?  Was it worth 20 years, thousands of lives, trillions of dollars?  Damned if I know.

Working with Models

I recently completed this portrait of Emma, a wonderful model that I’ve worked with before. 

I sent an image of it to her.  Emma loved it and posted it on Instagram.  One of her friends responded with this note: “Whoever created this portrait hasn’t looked into your kindness and lightness. I hope I get to paint an oil painting of you and show who I know you to be.”

Emma responded: “I'd love for us to art together with paint and canvas, I'd be very interested to see what what part of me you capture. This one comes from a series, where the artist gave me free range to go through different sides of me from harsh to soft, this one was from a tough edgy section of our session :). It’s been fun watching artists witness my many sides and then their interpreting of that through their art medium, so beautiful.”

The first note was not wrong.  She only saw one artwork and Emma has an infinite range of sides that I would like to try to capture.  Not only that, but Emma would probably show the commenter some different sides that she didn’t show me.  So I would love to see what this commenter would come up with.  

Emma’s response shows that she totally understands the relationship between model and artist.  It’s a collaboration.  She does her thing, I run with it, and maybe something really cool comes out of our efforts.  Very much like two musicians getting together, feeding off each other, and trying to make some new music.

These two notes - the initial comment and Emma’s response - actually get to the very essence of my work with all the various models I’ve had in my studio.  Basically, I’m a figurative artist.  I draw and paint real people.  

Some artists - most, actually - use images of people to tell stories or to convey thoughts, ideas, or emotions through figurative images.  In these artworks, the figures are really actors in a visual play.  Their real-life personal identity is immaterial.  Take Norman Rockwell’s paintings, for example.  He used his friends and neighbors to tell stories for the cover of the Saturday Evening Post.  The mailman in a painting wasn’t really a mailman, he was chosen because he looked like the right character for Rockwell’s idea.  

I do this sort of thing, too, when I want to tell a story.  But a lot of the time, I’m doing an artwork to try to capture something of the specific individual in front of me.  He or she is not a generic figure, or just a slab of meat to draw, it’s Troy or Amy or Emma or James, a specific individual with a thousand different aspects to their personhood.  

I’ve had a lot of models come to my studio for photo sessions.  My guidance to them is very minimal.  Really, I just want them to be themselves.  Almost all of them quickly turned it into a play session: dancing, moving, lounging, “Vogue”ing, picking up props, changing clothes, removing clothes, putting clothes back on, talking with their hands, crawling over furniture, cranking up the music, whatever came naturally to them.  I encourage them and keep my camera going.  My goal is to let them be free to show me whatever side of their personalities they feel comfortable showing.  

These sessions typically reveal a lot about the model’s personality, often aspects that I hadn’t anticipated.  In one session, the model took a lot of poses that expressed both physical and mental strength.  A different model showed a very calm, grounded, earthy character.  A third showed her vulnerable and awkward side.  And one male was a combination of George Carlin and Robin Williams.  If I had them back for a second time, would they show me the same aspects again?  Maybe.  If they had a session with a different artist, would they show different aspects?  Almost certainly.  

So back to that initial comment about seeing Emma’s “kindness and lightness”.  I have actually seen that in her and thought it would come out in the session.  I went back over the photos and, surprisingly, it rarely did.  She was in a different mindset that day, a bit of a Vogue model, medieval witch-spirit, lawyer ballerina (now there’s a combination for you), and a variety of other characters.  It was lots of fun and I have a tremendous amount of material to work with.  But she was mostly edgy that day.  Might have to get her back for another session specifically for the kindness and loving aspects.  

One final note.  I really love my models.  All of them, male and female.  They let me see a bit of who they are, knowing that I’m going to make artworks that show other people what I see.  To them, I say thank you for your trust and openness.

Terror in Afghanistan

 Over the past couple of weeks, the Taliban has been on a roll, seizing more and more territory from the Afghan government.  They have almost all the provincial capitols now.  Today, Herat and Ghazni fell and Kandahar is falling.  The civilian population is in a panic.  Those that can, are fleeing to Kabul, but that may just be delaying the inevitable.  The US Embassy is sending almost everybody home as fast as possible.  They're not calling it an "emergency evacuation" yet, but that's what it really is.  They're moving diplomatic operations to a US-controlled area at the Kabul airport.  And the Pentagon is bringing in 3,000 troops to ensure the safety of the evacuation.  I saw a report that many diplomats expect Kabul to fall within 90 days.  Personally, I think it will be much quicker, probably not even a month.

I'm of two minds about this.  On the one hand, we've been propping up the government for twenty years now.  We screwed up early on when we took our eye off the Afghan ball and decided it would be great to invade Iraq.  The Taliban saw that we weren't really all that interested in Afghanistan and decided to get their band back together.  Meanwhile, anyone in any Afghan position of power used it to enrich themselves as much as possible.  Graft was built into the system.  If there's one thing the Afghans learned, it was to grab as much as possible when you could because you never knew when the Americans' largesse would end.

They had a reason to feel that way.  Bush and Obama didn't really seem to know what they wanted.  They'd engage and ramp up, then announce they were ramping down and would soon be out, only to ramp up again.  Those of us who went there did our best to try to make it work.  However, when I left in 2012, I was not optimistic.  A government built on graft was not a good bet for longevity.  Still, we poured a lot of money and a lot of effort into giving the Afghan government the tools we believed were necessary in a modern world.  The one thing we couldn't give them was a sense of mission, a common purpose.  And the government we propped up didn't have that.

The Taliban did.  As other insurgent operations over the centuries have proven (see U.S. War of Independence, Viet Nam, and the Cuban Revolution, for examples), a few guys with substandard weapons and a commitment to a cause can beat established powers.  So when Donald Trump announced that we were pulling out for good, and damn the consequences, the Taliban saw their opening.  Although negotiations continued, the announcement that we weren't going to play anymore signaled the Taliban to just wait us out.  Then Biden confirmed the pullout.  So the Taliban stepped up their game and now they're on a deadly roll.  The government we have propped up for 20 years was never strong enough to hold their own, would never be strong enough, and this result was inevitable.

So: on the one hand, if this was inevitable, it's time to cut our losses and let the inevitable happen, right?  We can't impose our way of government on another country if it's not a good fit.  It's an Afghan problem and can only be solved by Afghans.

Then there's the other hand.  The Taliban is as brutal, inhumane, animalistic, and criminal as any pariah regime that has ever existed.  They're even more brutal than the Nazis.  Beheadings, rape, kidnapping, and destruction of lives and property are the standard way of doing business.  People are dying, right now, as I write this, and probably as you read this.  

I have a friend who is an Afghan.  He served with the Special Forces and Navy SEALS as an interpreter in some brutal fights.  He earned a Special Immigrant Visa and came to the United States, then earned a Masters degree from Georgetown University.  He went to Afghanistan earlier this year to get married, then returned to the US to work and begin the paperwork to bring his bride.  She, his family, and her family are in Herat.  And Herat was just taken by the Taliban today.

That's the "other hand": the personal cost that our pullout is inflicting on real people.  Right now.

And Another Wedding Painting

I know, you must be getting tired of seeing me post all these wedding paintings.  Well, here's my fifth one of the year.  This was a surprise for the couple, from the aunt of the bride.  Surprises are always fun and this was no exception.  The location was the Twickenham House, located in northern North Carolina.  There's an overlook on a cliff with a spectacular view over a wide valley to the mountains on the far side.  The couple really wanted that view and I was happy to oblige.

I worked with some real professionals that made everything work so well.  Leigh Harrow, who managed the event for Twickenham House, ensured that everything went off on schedule and she did it with the brightest smile and cheeriest manner you can possibly imagine.  I took a lot of photos right alongside Matt of Matt Ray Photography and he was a total pro and very easy to work with.  And Elyse and Dustin of Serrano Film Company, who did the videos, were just the same.  Great crew and I would love to work right alongside any and all of them again.

Two Wedding Paintings

 Two more wedding paintings are done.  Yes, I've been on quite a roll lately.  Here they are:

Kelly and Drew

Ashley and Ralph

And I have another wedding to go to tomorrow!

Another Wedding Painting Completed

 I've finished up the second wedding painting of the year.  This was for a Hindu wedding.  I love doing those: they're long and VERY lively, lots of great food, lots of interaction with curious guests, and (best of all for an artist) lots and lots of COLOR. Some paintings come together quickly, while others can be a fight.  This one came together pretty quickly.  It seemed like my brushes knew what they were doing and put down the right strokes of the right colors most of the time.  I love it when that happens!  So here's how it turned out:

The painting has been delivered to the client.  Now I'm working on the third and fourth paintings of the year.  Busy times - I like it!

New Art Gallery

 There's a new art gallery opening up in, of all places, Mars Hill, NC, right here where I live.  Miryam Rojas, the owner, saw an opportunity.  There was a large building in town that was sitting empty.  It was originally built as a roller rink, then served as a factory and an antique mall, among other things.  It featured a large open space, beautiful wood floors (well, beautiful after 70 years of crud was sanded off), plenty of parking, and an untapped location in an area teeming with artists.  She thought that what this area needed was an art gallery.  And she is making it happen.

Miryam contacted me several months ago as she was getting the ball rolling.  Since I'm the director of the Mars Hill University Art Gallery, she thought I might have a few ideas.  We got together a few times to talk over ideas and possibilities.  She also asked me to be one of the gallery's stable of artists and I was more than happy to join.  Then she put it all into action.  This evening, she held a soft opening for artists and media.  I walked in and was immediately blown away.  Just to the right, as soon as you walk in the door, is a long wall of rough-cut wood, and seven of my artworks are hanging there.  

There are some really, really good artists here already and more soon.  Mars Landing Gallery's grand opening will be Saturday, July 10, from noon to 7 pm.  If you're in the area, I recommend coming by.  The gallery is the big purple building right behind the library.

Wedding Painters: Dressing for an Event

 Wedding season is in high gear.  Right now in the studio, I have one painting that's approved and waiting to be picked up, one painting that's waiting for the couple to comment or approve it, and one painting that's about midway through the process.  And this afternoon, I've got another ceremony and reception to go to.  Busy times!

I get questions from other artists about various aspects of being a wedding painter.  How much to charge?  What equipment do I need?  Oil or acrylic?  Complete it in one night or over a period of weeks?  To each of those questions, my usual answer is "it depends".  It depends mostly on the individual artist and their own preferences.  One item that depends less on personal preferences is, what to wear?  I'm thinking of that because I'm about to start getting dressed for the event, so thought I'd share some comments.

As a wedding painter, I'm a vendor providing a service at a high-profile ceremony for one of the most important events in the couple's lives.  That means to dress up, to respect the nature of the event, but not so much that I draw attention to myself.  Most of the people working at such events wear black shirts and either long black pants or (women) long black skirts.  The reason is that the workers should be respectful, wear something that doesn't restrict movements, and at the same time be invisible.  Black clothing, for worker bees, says "you don't see me".  This is the same reason that the wait staff in many upscale restaurants wear black.  It's not to be trendy, it's to be invisible.

 As a live event painter, there are two events where I'm busy: the ceremony and the reception.

For the ceremony, I'll be busy shooting a lot of photos in and around the crowd.  So I'll wear black pants, shirt, and shoes to minimize my visibility to the guests.  Be real: will they really see me?  Yes.  Will their eyes skim right over me?  Also yes.  That's the point.

The reception is different.  I'm there, at the easel, painting away.  I'm part of the entertainment and I want people to come up and talk to me.  I don't want to be invisible.  So I'll typically wear black pants, a white shirt, and a colorful tie, with a black apron over it so I don't have to buy new black pants, white shirt, and colorful tie for every wedding.  

Most of the wedding vendors that I work with follow similar clothing protocols.  One wedding planner that I've worked with several times has some very elegant long black dresses.  She's dressed up, but if she has to do an emergency tuck on the bride's dress in the middle of the ceremony, she's not out of place.  On the other hand, one photographer showed up in cargo shorts, a sloppy gray T-shirt with a an unbuttoned and very faded short-sleeve shirt over it, and ragged running shoes.  Not cool.

So for those considering becoming wedding artists, give a lot of thought to what you wear.  And the next time you're at some kind of ceremony, look at what the workers are wearing.

Wedding Paintings Again

 I've done two live weddings this year.  It's good to be back in action again!  One painting is completed and approved by the couple, while the other painting is still underway in the studio.  To give you an idea of how far these wedding paintings develop, here's how the first one looked at the end of the reception: 

Not a bad start.  No features in the faces, no detail anywhere, just suggestions of the figures and their environment. And here's how it turned out:

Quite a difference!  Every square inch has been reworked, some multiple times.  I'm happy with the way it turned out.  Most importantly, they're happy with it. 

Beginning To Look Like Normal

 Wow, over a month since my last post.  Been a busy time.  Highlights:

I did my first in-person wedding in over a year and a half.  Since the couple and most of the guests were doctors, and therefore vaccinated, I felt pretty safe.  It was a beautiful event at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville.  The painting is almost done and I'll share it here soon.  Just trying to finish up a couple of tweaks.

At the same time, I was asked to help with preparing a proposal for a federal contract.  It was supposed to be a very easy one, with most of the work already done.  Oh, hell, no.  It turned out to be anything but.  So I've been spending way more time on it than I really had available.  Fortunately, everybody involved has really kicked in with their contributions, drafts, reviews, Zoom meetings, and more reviews.  Now it's a really strong proposal.  I think my part is done and I can get back to studio work.

This past weekend, I did my second live wedding event.  This was quite a bit different from the first one.  This was a Hindu wedding, which is always a very BIG affair, both in time and attendees.  Due to pandemic considerations, the guest list was trimmed from about 1,000 down to about 400.  So I wore my mask.  It was quite a fun event and I have a decent start to the painting in the studio.  I'll post images when it's done.

And I have another wedding coming up in two weeks.  I gotta get these first two done and out of the studio soon! 

Over the past couple of weeks, I'm seeing a big change in mask-wearing, COVID protocols, and people's attitudes.  More people are acting as if the pandemic is a thing of the past.  It's not.  So even though I'm vaccinated, I'm still being careful.  If I don't have to go into a place with lots of people, I don't; if I have to enter, I wear a mask and try to stay away from others.  You can get just as dead now from the disease as you could have six months ago and I don't want it to be me.