Joke from Russia and paintings of Mike

From Russia:

Due to the recession and to conserve resources, there will no longer be a light at the end of the tunnel.


Meanwhile I paint my friend Mike:






while Feather sits out the heat onslaught:


photo: Jan Meissner


...and the golden rod gets ready to bloom:

Long Green Sentence

images from upstate

A week upstate amid thunderstorms, greenery and discovering wasps and a toad living in the car. I convince my son to sit for me and I paint like crazy to make this:




Where usually August is dry and plants are yellowing, this year the rain beat itself against the earth. The garden got ideas of its own and I just let it:

Green Demon Foliage & return

Here is the garden with studio (foreground) and house (with little tiny kitchen window). The garden reaches out between the two, a demon green tongue grown furry and cocky in the days and days of rain. Everywhere the foliage makes its patterns, overlaying, overlapping, interweaving green on green, lace on leaf, frond on frond, and petals floating, gliding on the foamy tide.




in the midst, a spot of human comfort:




...and then plunging back into green's self:




on the way back into NYC you see the helter skelter of NJ and the promise of Manhattan:




and then the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel: