September

I spent July through December working on the painting below, titled September. 

Compositions with an abundance of leaves are among my most complex and take a lot of time to paint. The placement and color of each leaf, the flow they generate together with the branches and trunks, are always a challenge. 

September

2020, oil on linen, 34" x 22"

Private collection, Florida

The color organization puts cool greens and a blue sky in the upper part of the painting, and warm reds and browns in the lower. In a way opposite of what I did in another recent painting, Subway Interior, where the warm colors are on top and the cool below.

Subway Interior

2020, oil on linen, 26" x 15"

Below are my two largest leaf paintings. Each took a year or more to complete. 

In the Garden

2006-2007, oil on linen, 62" x 72"

Private collection, New York

Woman with Autumn Leaves

1992-1994, oil on linen, 36" x 72"

Private collection, California

Meanwhile, during the last two months I've been working on a painting of a woman playing with a cat and developing drawings - including a large one of an audience at a theatrical performance.

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Queen

A new painting:

Queen

2020, oil on linen, 10" x 8"

In the original drawing the woman was alone and wearing a party hat resembling a crown. The title Queen remains from that first image, even though she lost her hat and gained two admiring men. As always, the evolution came about naturally as the painting developed, and was not based on any meaningful thought beyond what was intuitively needed. I still like the original drawing and may return to it again.

Queen, drawing #1
2019, pencil on graph paper, 9 1/2" x 7"

Queen was finished seven weeks ago, and since then I've been working on a composition of a woman with two children, five pears, and a bird:

Collecting Pears, in progress

34" x 22", oil on linen

detail, ca. 5" x 7"

The bird was inspired by the catbirds that nest every spring in the dense patch of knotweed outside my studio, and it's the first one I've painted since 1996:

Woman with Bird

5 1/2" x 4", oil on linen, 1996

Private collection, Massachusetts