Left — “Painter in the Old Fashioned Garden” 

I recently went to paint at Sonnenberg Gardens — got all the way back to the Japanese garden and set up my tripod, easel box, paints, etc….. I realized my brushes were way out in the car in the parking lot.  Scrounged around my supplies hoping I’d find one brush of some sort but only found one pallet knife.  So I thought – why not give it a try?  Since I’ve never tried just painting with a pallet knife, I considered it might be a good learning experience, at least one that would get me “outside the box” I usually paint in.  Loose was my only option. Well, I can’t say I loved my painting, but it was rather fun to do.  Sometimes we need to take a chance on a different way of doing things.  

While I never intend to show another living human being my palette knife creation, here’s a painting I did in my usual fashion – with brushes – of one of the competitors in the recent Finger Lakes Plein Air Competition and Festival.  It was great to meet the artists from all over who came to Canandaigua and got to enjoy our beautiful “Chosen Spot.”