Open Studio!

Many thanks to all of the wonderful, inquisitive people who I met in Long Island City this past weekend for the open studio weekend! Many terrific questions and comments about my work... I met new artists, sold many of my cards and look forward to hearing from some of the people who were there!

We will have another open studio weekend in the fall and I will try to give people more lead time on the event to set aside some time to stop by. It is a great time to catch up with friends and make new friends, and see an artists studio informally and also a wonderful opportunity to purchase original work! -- BL

"My Brothers and Me"

One of the paintings on my painting page, entitled "My Brothers and Me", is done from an old black and white photograph that my mother found in a drawer years ago and gave to me. I enjoy looking at old photographs and reinterpreting them in a more modern context through my paintings.

Usually, I scan the photo and begin trying various tools to change the image and alter its presentation yet retain the basic photo. It is fascinating to me to discover how little visual infromation is needed to maintain and present the photograph in a new format.

When I find an interesting print, I make a black and white copy of it and sketch a pencil grid on top of it and transfer the image onto a canvas. Then, I choose colors which create contrasts and actually, a small painting with each box within the total grid. Makes for many interesting final compositions. -- BL

"To Jane Randolph" -- the story behind the painting

I wanted to take a moment and talk about the first painting on my "paintings for sale" page, the one titled "To Jane Randolph".

Back in 1992, I had the good fortune of attending a month long artists' workshop in Terni, Italy, called La Romita. (I would recommend it highly to any fellow artists out there.) At this workshop, I met Jane and found her to be a fascinating lady the more we had occasion to speak.

Turns out she had been an actress in the forties and had appeared in quite an interesting number of black and white films! (One was "Cat People" and another "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein".) There are indeed, clips of her on youtube... check them out!)

Several years later she was in New York and called me and we met and enjoyed a walk through an Edward Hopper retrospective, and she insisted on treating me to lunch afterward. Classy lady.

She died last year and the painting is a tribute to having met her. -BL