on the road, st. louis I'm happy to be home from my trip to St. Louis, with 1000 miles on the car since Tuesday evening. That's a lot for me solo, but everything went fine. My main purpose was to deliver new paintings to Steven Boody Fine Arts and that mission was accomplished yesterday afternoon just before heading home. This photo shows the original painting in my ongoing series of vertical panel paintings, which Steven has hanging in his show room. Painted in 2004, Twenty Five Views of Landscape is a strict grid of 12"x12" panels each with texture suggestive of grass, foliage or rock. It was good to re-visit this old friend of a painting, and to consider how my vertical paintings have evolved in the years since this one was made.

Shortly after painting Twenty Five Views I continued with the basic format, but with changes--I began to treat each column of panels as an individual painting, and to vary the height of the component panels to provide more visual interest and rhythm. Each painting then became a study in color and texture evoking various moods and places. At first I used a wide range of color within each painting, but within the past year or so, I've shifted to more subtle ranges of values and colors. This is my only ongoing series, and it continues to intrigue me, thirty or so paintings along.

Besides my gallery visit, which was very good, I spent quality time with my friend Mark and his family, and e-penpal Patty (see entry below.) St. Louis had just had about a foot of snow, but it was melting much faster than it does up here in Wisconsin, and I experienced a welcome glimpse of spring after all.  ¶ 2:06 PM