Paradise Beach.........

This is a beach along Lake Superior that is made up of small stones rather than sand. It is just north of Grand Marais, Minnesota.  It is still a public beach as a few miles north it becomes Indian Reservation. Beach is an exaggeration as the water is too cold to swim and the drop off is severe in just a few feet out.
The island is at a distance and the sea gulls have a rookery out there each year.  It is noisy as the sea gull parents are busy bringing in food for the chicks.
The painting was done in acrylic and is on a canvas panel 12" by 24."
When we visit this area we allow our small dog to run freely as it is away from the highway.  He just loves to tear around the beach and stick his nose into the water.

Cascade Falls, Minnesota.........

I removed this old watercolor from it's frame today and thought I would share it with you.  It was painted while sitting on the Lake Superior shore near Cascade Falls.  It was 1989 and I was just a baby at painting in plein air with watercolor.  I know that I took this back at a later date and worked on it in the studio.  I love some of the parts but I was so tight and overworked everthing to make it more like an illustration.  I don't paint watercolors like this anymore but I thought it would be fun to share it anyway.

I labored over these seagulls as I really like to have the wildlife included in a painting.  My grasses and weeds seem pretty spontaneous and the sand textures are good.  The rocks are certainly solid rock in the shapes that I created.

Slow to promote......

As a followup to the mural story, my wife and I gave a phone interview about the painting of the mural. We were able to meet an editor of the county newspaper during a Friends and Neighbor parade and he took our names down for a later article in their paper.   The county paper places the local news of a certain town on the front page of that towns edition and a neighboring town may never see the article. It helps to sell papers as it probably will be the only article about something going on in Woodward and the rest will be the larger town's news.

A very nice college student called and we helped her with the interview process telling of what is involved for two people to paint a mural with a specific historic time.  We sent her pictures as they didn't have any and we shared the details of how the depot had been restored the past two years.

My wife and I were asked to help illustrate a book for a local women who had written a book of poetry.  It was called  I Will Meet my Maker in Bluejeans.  I was reminded of the painting that I created for her many years ago and wanted to share it with you.  It is a water color that has been painted with thick watercolor  on watercolor paper.  It was an illustration for one of her poems and I felt I needed to work the paint thicker to get the detail I needed to get the glowing sunset effect.

I was reminded about this all because the local PBS stations are running programs today about Iowa's one room school houses and the salvaging of the barns in the state of Iowa.  The barns are being torn down because they are not being used or that they have fallen in from decay. The country schools that exist are 200.  There had been over 12,000 schools in Iowa at one time and the state forced them to be closed in 1966.

It would be fun to paint an old school house but I need to find one that is still standing in my area. 

Woodward Community School....A visual memory of a building..........

Woodward Community School 

1907-1991
Woodward, Iowa

This is a print of a drawing that I created a few years back.  When the building had been torn down I was saddened to see such a building with architectural detail being removed from history.  It had some structural problems but in this country so few of these buildings are still standing. 

The architects of the time were all trained with classical ideas and even in the small town of Woodward,  a building would be created with prestigious design. The cupola itself duplicates many that can be seen in Italy and France.  This cupola didn't last many years as the high winds that cross the prairie in Iowa are strong and it was lifted and strewn on the ground in 1922. The mouldings and Roman arches are so classical in design and one can see those similarly designed throughout Europe.

The bottom basement like casing around the building mimics the buildings in Venice as well as many structures in European countries.  The pediment over the door comes from the design used on the Parthenon in Greece.

The corner decorations are still used to day, copying Palladio's architecture of the past.  We have an entire mall that has been today required to have Palladio's influence in it's design.

When the building was first built it was an elementary through high school building.  Initially the basement was not finished and the kids would go down there and play recess on a dirt floor.  By the time I started teaching in the building in 1976 the bottom floor was finished and turned into shower rooms, restrooms, boiler room, the main office and the bottom right back corner was a small classroom.  I taught it that room for four years.

I have been selling these prints for a number of years and in fact put them away for a while awaiting a new audience.  Some students remark that the building gave them bad memories and others would remember the pranks they could pull because of the central stairway.

I am glad that I have created a drawing of this building as it deserves to be remembered in all it's glory.  Sadly we tear things down in this country with only a life span of 84 years.

If any person is interested in purchasing a print of this building they may send me an email.  The black and white print is 12" by 16" and costs $25.  That will cover the cost for shipping and Iowa sales tax in the price.  The color print is a hand tinting of the black and white version and each has it's own special treatments to make it unique.  The cost for the tinted print is $40 which includes shipping and tax.

Inquires can be made, questions can be answered by, and purchases can be arranged by clicking on the below name.   I will accept checks,  money orders and also can do PayPal for any purchase.  

Larry's Artspot  Sales

A commissioned work........

A year before the trolley mural was even a hint of an idea, the one who commissioned me to do this work had a vision of what this should look like.  It is a drawing of him looking out to see the trolley as it was coming into town.  He is the little boy in the drawing and he remembers standing there watching it with the whirling sound that an electric train would make.  It was in 1933 and he liked going into the garden to watch the show.

The actual resource picture that I had was a small 3 by 4 inch photo, not clear and it was lacking contrast and detail.  The rest was left to my knowledge of what I see when I look across my west side of the house across the field.  It is the same field, but the photo is south a few hundred yards.  The little boy is actually his own son standing out in the yard looking towards a train going by his house.

A year later, he and his friend thought of the idea to have a mural painted. That trolley was to represent the earlier years around 1906 when the route was first established. The little boy represented in the photo is the older gentleman below in the photo with me installing the mural. Russ is his name and he and I can talk history back and forth until the cows come home.  I really enjoy his friendship.

One last fix.......

My wife and I returned to the depot one last time to install a couple of strips of oak trim. The wall was not square and the top and bottom showed that, so we put on a trim to cover the gaps.  The older gentleman is Russ who commissioned the work of my wife and me with the towns money.  I later returned and washed windows in a large part of the building trying to bring it up to spec for Saturday's viewing and the town celebration. We had been away from it for about a week and we were pleased with our results when we saw it again.

Older artwork deframed..........

Lake Michigan, watercolor, 1989

My wife and I have a framing business that we are trying to close down. When we don't want to make a 30 mile trip to pick up glass, when we are on a deadline, we will salvage glass off of framed work of the past.   

This watercolor was painted back in 1989 when my wife and I took an artist painters tour around Lake Superior and down the side of the east side of Lake Michigan.  This painting was done on the shore of the lake and then was reworked in the studio.  My skills of watercolor have improved a lot since them but I find it still and interesting rendition.

Shovel Point, Lake Superior North Shore, oil pastel

This has no date on it but it is about 10 years old, as was painted on the rocky shore of Superior.  The formation is wonderful with varied colors and textures. I really like to work in oil pastel as it is more like working with an oil stick. This is a beautiful location but one has to hike down a steep hill to get to the sight.  The shovel point area is also a great hike one can take that follows that incline to the shore.

Installed and walking away......

I have to return and put in two molding pieces top and bottom to cover the edges.  I will  need to dust it off and then spray it one more time, for the last time, with kamar varnish. It has been a successful project and we are very pleased with it.