Friday

Today I'm flying up to Seattle, dinner with my brother out on the town. Tomorrow we pick up my son who has been crewing on an old three masted boat up in the San Juan Islands. He said if we meet them in the morning we can come aboard for a free three hour sailing trip. That sounds like fun.

In the evening we both fly out to Stockholm. So it may be a while before any entries on the blog.

Richard Boyer

Wednesday

I worked on this small 9x12 painting that I started on location with Dutch Mostert. It was actually just a few hundred yards down the road for yesterdays painting.  I was inspired by David Curtis from England, he has become a master at such beach paintings. in fact I took a few of his books with to show Dutch and to help me with getting the values better. Curtis has published three books about painting on location in southern England.

This one I painted on Friday, we had gone farther down the coast under cloudy skies and I figured it was better to get some kind of a painting done instead of photographing grey skies. At least with a boat you can have some fun with the colors and reflections.

Richard Boyer

Tuesday

I'm back from Coos Bay.

I had a great time and stayed as a guest at Dutch Mostert's home with a view over the inlet. Could you imagine waking up to this every morning!

The drive took longer than I expected, 15 hours in total, an hour of which was spent waiting in road construction. Oregon seemed to be doing every small road at the same time. So quite a few times I would be waiting 15-20 minutes for some pilot truck to take the crowd around some dump-truck.  That morning we went down to the museum to unload all my paintings and I judged the show, picking out the best of show and four merit awards. they had the names covered over to be fair.

On Saturday they had the banquet dinner. The museum gave me a fine introduction and I went up in front to announce the winners. The painting that caught my eye the most was done by another A.S.M.A. signature member, Austin Dwyer who had done a painting of two boats above the halfway mark close to the top of the canvas, most of it showed the rolling sea. The composition was strong and as it turns out two of the merit awards went to his students. 

During my stay there we went out most days to do some plain air painting on the beaches. Dutch really knew the area so for me it was fun to find all these hidden spots to paint. Many of which I am sure to do larger versions of.

Richard Boyer

Tuesday

I finished off this one for the Howard/Mandville Gallery. The addition of some flowers on the left side helped. I also enlarged the woman at the top of the stairs and added some clouds.

I have all my paintings ready for the Coos Bay show and will load them ip in the car tomorrow evening. I'm not sure how long it will take to drive to the coast of Oregon,  but I'm guessing more than 12 hours at least. So I'll want to get going nice and early to give myself some time. I also need to take all my plain air gear for the paint-out they have planned. the weather looks like it will be party cloudy and around 70 degrees. perfect for painting outside.

I'm off to the duplex now to screw down more decking planks in the back. My arms are feeling it after days of work.  The deck I built 25 years ago and it was finally rotting apart all the 2x6 fur wood support beams. Now I'm using pressure treated lumber.

Richard Boyer

Wednesday

On Monday afternoon we lost a very close family member, a member who was deeply loved. Mio our three year old cat developed an infection in her lung cavity which led to blood poisoning. From what we could gather it was most likely some cheat grass that worked its way under her skin and caused the infection. It's one of those things that happened to long haired animals in Utah quite frequently. On Friday she seemed normal and healthy then on Monday we were burying her in the backyard, it all happened too fast.  She was the best cat, the most friendly cat I have ever met.

I miss you Mio!!!

I did a small 9x12 painting of Arches National Park yesterday to keep my mind off the loss.  Southam Gallery said they wanted some more small southern Utah paintings.

This one I did today from the Window Section of the park. I noticed the camera caught a little too much blue in the background. Its not that vivid in reality.

Richard Boyer