A Productive Summer in Bluffton

I had a very productive summer this year down in Bluffton, SC.

First, a painting that I finished recently for the place here in Bluffton, a painting of butterflies based on a very old memory from early childhood.  One spring when I was about 4 or 5, butterflies of all kinds crowded the bushes behind the rent house we lived in.  I remember my mother and I with a little paperback Golden Guide looking for, and finding, so many of the butterflies in the book.  As I remember, they came back the following year, and then not at all after that.  Why they came, and then why they stopped coming, I have no idea.  I've never seen anything like that since.  I thought about painting this for a while, but now I had an excuse to do so.
A painting by the 18th century Japanese painter Maruyama Okyo also inspired me and guided me.

EXTRA:

The butterfly painting is now installed in our second home in Bluffton.

I completed the painting of Apollo after much work and struggle.  Painting in a classical mode is so very hard, and this picture is hardly perfect.  It doesn't look like it now, but I used a lot of straight edges, dividers, and compasses putting this painting together.  I also used a live model for two of the figures, and a small drawing mannequin for another.  After months of work (since last summer), here is the finished picture.

 The muse, Clio

A little allegory to summarize the larger allegory in the painting; a sprig of laurel growing up from a burned out tree stump with a cicada.

I couldn't get this part to photograph right, at least with the right colors.  I'll have to wait for my professional photographer for that.  Here is a ruined temple, ruined not by time, but by violence.


I finished two paintings from the new Passion Series.  I also made plans for three more panels which I am ready to start work on as soon as I return to New York.

Jesus Before the Soldiers

Jesus Before the Magistrates