Prints

Despite the challenges they afford with respect to garden scourges like scale and Japanese beetles, hollyhocks are one of our garden staples.  Here, along with nascent lilies, they rise elegantly against the siding to provide a visual treat that varies from year to year, depending upon who managed to weather the winter.  This crop was particularly good and made for an image I couldn’t resist.

All prints in this edition have been sold

I’m not really sure when this crew finally left the nest, but the day I took this photo they were all sitting there watching me as though they were waiting for permission to try to leave the nest. I was particularly amused by their crew cuts and the goggly eyes. One day they were there for this portrait and the next they had disappeared, leaving their happy home behind.

Over the years I’ve visited beaches in many locations, and inevitably they have had sand dunes like these that provide aisles beyond which surprises appear when one makes one’s way to the shore. The “castles” in this print are the kind of weathered beach homes that one often discovers in such places.

One day, on the way to the dump, I passed the home of a lady who has a number of grandchildren who live next door.  The yard featured these elegantly attired snow folks, complete with gossamer wings made of some sort of sheer material.  I particularly liked the touch of the matching flower brooch and chapeau décor on the lady.

An apple orchard in early Spring drew my attention first because of the luminous, pinkish color of the branches as they began their annual budding exercise. The more I looked at them, though, the more they became dancing figures, figures I thought were celebrating the coming of Spring. It was this dance I sought to capture in this print.

This was inspired by Monet paintings of seaside terraces at Le Havre and Ste. Adresse. Looking out the attic window of my house in Oxford, one saw the fenced yards of the homes and their coveted views of the river. In this scene they are not inhabited, but come weekend evenings, those back yard terraces were high value real estate.

An extremely deep wall in an old half-timbered building I encountered in a village in southern France had this niche that had been tasked with providing a perch for a potted plant. I liked the scene, the colors, and the composition as well as the thought of a wall so thick you could perch a big plant pot in it and still have lots of depth to spare. So - this image found its way onto paper.

The garden in front of this cellar window provides a succession of colorful images throughout the growing season. The hollyhocks always seem to provide my favorite set of coloring against what I find to be an appealing architectural backdrop.

This wonderful aging maple looms outside my kitchen window. When my mother moved in with me she named it “the elephant tree” because of its odd limb structure. It has been cabled to help it live longer, and it provides abundant shade to the front yard. I can only hope it outlives me, because I cannot imagine life without it.