Two pieces sold!

Christmas isn't just for retailers. It helps us artists sometimes too. These two paintings were just purchased from Attic Gallery by a woman for her husband. Sort of a strange combo but what the heck. Thank you anonymous buyer!

"L.A. Story (Brady House)"

"Into the Woods"

A Surprise in the Mail

This arrived in the mail yesterday from the State Department's Art In Embassies program. I either did not know or did not remember that were producing a catalog. A pleasant surprise. The catalog represents works currently on loan to the US Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria. The current ambassador is from Oregon and the works are all by artists from the Northwest. The catalog also includes these artists:
Steven Hudson
Joellyn Loehr
Michael Schlicting

2 more paintings

oil on canvas  50"w x 34"h

"The Playhouse"  34"w x 50"h  oil on canvas

It's been difficult lately to get a lot of work done but just stretched these 2 and am fairly happy with the results.

Dead Crow

This has nothing to do with my art but wanted to make a note of it somewhere, so here's as good a place as any.

This morning as I left my house to go to my day job (about 6:30am) I immediately noticed the local crows raising quite a racket. Not all that unusual, but they were swarming right around my house circling around and cawing while others sat silently perched on telephone lines and the branches of trees. I've always liked crows. They're exceptionally intelligent birds. So I stopped and watched them for a bit out of curiosity. Was there a hawk? A bunch of food? Had they roosted in a tree closer than usual and were just starting their morning routine?

Then I noticed the dead crow in the middle of the street.

It was clearly the center of all this strange attention. I saw no obvious marks on the crow nor any blood, but its eyes were gray (presumably the nictitating membrane had closed in death). It was fascinating. Crows are social creatures and the death of this one crow was creating quite a scene. I couldn't linger too long but even as I did the activity was lessening. Was it grief? Too anthropomorphic an emotion probably. But was it some intense reaction to a death of one of their own? Another more morbid possibility occurred to me... Had it been an execution?

Surprisingly little is known about crows. This is changing of course. Their intelligence has drawn a great deal of interest in the last couple of decades. Many have now heard of the tool using crows of New Caledonia. Interestingly their intelligence stems from an evolved portion of their brains that is completely different from the frontal cortex in mammals. So theirs is a truly alien intelligence. But there are a lot of other problems studying crows. Without capturing and examining each one it is impossible to identify the age, sex or the relationships of various individuals, making their social behavior pretty opaque.

But my notion of an execution is not without precedent. I have a copy of John Marzluff's book "In the Company of Crows and Ravens" where he discusses reports of "crow courts" in crows form large griups and essentially take turns pecking one individual to death. The individual is often reported showing little or no sign of resistance. The rarity of these occurences of course makes them impossible to study or verify scientifically and often dismissed as folktales, but anecdotal eye witness accounts are plentiful and consistent enough to warrant more serious consideration. Who knows. But I'll continue to pay attention and watch what these fascinating and intelligent birds do.

Awesome author photo

I'm currently working my way through Ian Tattersall's new book, "Master's of the Planet" about human origins and paleoanthropology. The author photo is one of my all time favorites. The glass of red wine is the real flourish here. But really, the whole thing: I mean the museum storage room setting, the skeleton in the background, tiny fossil in hand, pen poised to take notes and the oh so serious gaze over the bifocals. Wish I could have found a larger version.

3 post-it doodles

A way to make use of my time while exporting giant PDF files at work. Yawn.

Happy Sasquatch!

Container with Big Dipper and fire

Obligatory UFO abduction scene

a Painting in Nigeria

I just got an email from an aide to the U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, Terence McCulley, of him standing in front of my painting at his residence in Abuja. I have three paintings there as part of the State Departments "Art in Embassies" program. Sort of a strange arrangement but kind of cool too. You submit your work to the program and ambassadors get to look through the submissions for things they'd like to display during their tenure. Apparently Mr. McCulley is from Oregon.

U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria Terence McCulley with "Commute"