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Dan's Art
Updated Nov. 6, 2026
I started oil painting lessons while
my family was living in Germany. My dad was in the Air Force and we were living
there and a German neighbor saw that I was interested in art and introduced me
to my German painting teacher. I was in 9th grade.
I painted through high school but
only sporadically after that, usually as gifts.
After retirement, I started what is
called Plein Air painting, which comes from the French “En Plein
Air” which means that you go outdoors and paint what you see.
I have joined a couple groups of
people that meet weekly at different places to paint together.
The equipment for
Plein Air painting is necessarily specialized because it needs to be compact
and light since the artists will sometimes hike to the painting area.
Soya’s Grain House - May 2026
I started this one En Plein Air and finished in the studio.
Oil on 9x12 panel
The Martin’s House - Dec. 2025
This is the first painting that I have sold in about 50
years. It was a commission painting of the person’s previous house as a
gift for the spouse.
11x14 oil on panel
Abingdon Road - November 2025
I attended a Plein Air event in Abingdon Virginia in
October. I sat along this road all day, with lots of people slowing to see what
I was up to. One young lady in a silver pickup said this was her mom’s
favorite view and she stopped every day to enjoy it.
Oil on 9x12 canvas panel.
Blue House - June 2025
I was on the west side of Michigan last fall for a week long
painting retreat. While there I photographed several sites for possible future
paintings. This is one of those sites.
9x12 oil on panel
NY Trees on the Shore - June 2025
From June 7 through the 14th, I was in upstate New York for a painting event. There were around 125 people and all we did was paint. And eat.
We were housed at a small college called Paul Smith’s College.  Can you guess the name of the founder? They only have around 600 students and they specialize in forestry and hospitality.
This college was about 15 miles north of Lake Placid. It is
such a nice area!
Andy’s
Lakehouse - June 2025
I gave this
painting of a lake in the Adirondacks while visiting there, to my good friend
and neighbor, Andy.
Beech Forest - May, 2025
Tomorrow is my son Andrew’s 30th birthday. He had
admired the initial version of this painting that I did about a year ago while
at a painting retreat on the west side of the state.
I decided to finish it for him as a birthday present.
Happy birthday, my son!
Nocturne - March 2025
I just finished a type of painting called a nocturne (nighttime). I followed along with a DVD of Carl Bretzke painting the same scene.
I have always liked nocturnes and one of the most famous
nocturnes is called “The Night Hawks” by Edward Hopper.
The one that I finished today is in oil and is 9x12.
I hope to start an original nocturne from one of my own
photos.
At some point I hope to do live painting at night. I already
have all the equipment that I need.
Doug’s
Forge - August 2024
Almost done but not sure where to go after this. Any
suggestions?
It is a real forge in a Quonset hut in a town near us.
Master Copy of a Country Scene - August 2024
This painting is a copy of a painting that I like. It is
only 6x8 inches. The colors were different than I had done before but it turned
out nicely.
The intent of copying another painting is to try to learn
from it in terms of colors and lighting.
Soya’s
Stable - May 2024
I sat in this
stable most of the day and had a barn cat for company. And a bull. The bull was quieter than
the cat.
Snowy Barn -May 2023
The assignment for this week was to use a palette knife with several different techniques.
We had to describe what we wanted to accomplish with this
painting. Here is my description:
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I was hoping to keep a sense of how cold the original
picture looked. Also, I was hoping to be pretty loose with this painting.
I used various palette knife techniques in the painting. The
largest tree and the snow on the trees were done with a knife with a bit of brushwork
afterwards.
The snow on the building and the snow in the yard were done with the knife, as well as various edges. The fence posts were done with a knife while the fence wire was done with a bamboo skewer.
The wire between the buildings was with a knife.
Three Cans
(from class) - January 2024
This is a still life of three different cans. I like the amount of light in the painting, it is lighter than others that I have done.
A Can with Fruit and a Mystery Object - January 2024
This painting with the grapes, apples, can, and the mysterious wooden object looks to be done.
Any idea what the wooden object is?
I have learned one thing about setting up a still life, only use items that are easily identifiable! The wooden thing is not that easily identifiable. It is a pestle for mashing up food, like nuts.
This painting goes to my lovely aunt Jenny, if she can find any bare space on her walls…
Jenny, act surprised when you see it…
Art Assignment Week 4 - February 2024
This week we learned about directional brush strokes to help
the subject appear more natural and have more form.
We were given five photos to choose from and had to focus on
a part of the photo and then paint it using this method.
My submission is attached. They are ROCKS in case there was any question about it.
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Here is the updated version. I am not sure if it meets the
points that my teacher highlighted but we’ll see.
Kodak Brownie
Hawkeye - January 2024
I remember that
we had one of these when I was a kid.
It was great fun to play with since you could look down through a little
window on top and see what was in front of you. Like Magic!
A Painting for a Friend - January 2024
My long time friend and former colleague, Patricia Shelley has sold and moved from the house in the painting to a really nice condo. Her former neighborhood has had a Shelley living in it continuously from the mid 60’s, so there is a very strong connection to that house, and that area, with loads of memories.
I painted this for her and included her dog, “Little bit” on the porch and her cat Millie in the window.
Pat, I hope that you have many happy years in your new
place!
Barn at Mudd Lake - October 2023
I did sit at this barn and paint and mostly got it done. Another artist suggested that it had lots of mid-tones and lights, but no real darks. She was right.
I worked on that and this is done…I think.
The photo makes the bushes very “contrasty” with
the rest of the painting. I may not be done, or I need a new camera.
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Soya’s Barn - September 2023 I attended a retreat for the Plein Air Artists of West Michigan - PAAWM in September of 2023. It was a beautiful area in West Michigan and I stayed for about a week. It is called the Fall Retreat and there is, of course, a Spring Retreat. There were opportunities to paint at least twice a day. After dinner there was a guest artist that spoke and later there would be a session where everyone that wanted to could have one of their paintings critiqued in front of the group of artists attending the retreat. The critique was usually the highlight of the day and a time where you could learn tons about what worked, what didn’t, and suggestions on what to do next. Watching the critiques for all of the paintings was very educational. All of the painting were done outdoors and the French term
for it is “En Plein Air” which translates to “In plain
air”. Maybe “Outdoor Painting” would be a good name as
well. This painting was done inside of a barn on a local farmer’s property. It is fairly true to the real setting but I did leave out some junk and a bandsaw. I did most of the painting on location over two days. The
farmer sat with me for several hours over the two days. |
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Howard and Jenny’s
Mountain House - October 2023 My aunt Jenny and my uncle
Howard have this house near Floyd, Virginia that Howard built many years ago.
Circumstances make visiting
this wonderful place more difficult in the last year or so. I painted this for them to
hang in their full-time house so that they could see it more often, at least
as an image. |
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Master Copy of Kincaid’s
The End of the Perfect Day My mom passed away last
month. It was not expected. She loved things that were
beautiful and gathered them to her and surrounded herself with them. She grew up as one of many
children and her father was a coal miner and her mother was a midwife in the
days when she had to go to homes that were often shacks. This was not a
wealthy family and my mother did not have much. When she married my father,
they lived on his pay from the Air Force. While not much, they were able to
afford more than either of them has growing up. Like many who grew up in
lean times, she kept the nice things she collected over the years. Even as
things fell from fashion in terms of what is now considered beautiful, she
kept things that would remain beautiful to her, just as it always was. Her favorite artist was
Thomas Kinkade, the Painter of Light. She would pick up decorative items that
featured his work and even had some nice prints of his. Having one of his
actual paintings was never possible, not for her or anyone else we knew. I decided many years ago to
try to copy one of his paintings for her to have and admire. Not to pass it
off as an original but to have something that I knew she would find
beautiful, that was hand painted, and I guess that she would be pleased that
her son had done it. I started it at least ten
years ago, maybe more. I got only some vague shapes and colors put to canvas
and then let it sit in the basement until last month. I had waited too long. I have now finished it and
it is pictured here. Although it will never hang among all of her beautiful
things, it will be a reminder to me of the beautiful impact that she had on
me and so many others. |
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This is a painting of the house where Jennifer’s father was raised as well as Jennifer’s other relatives. The house looked like this in about 1993 but has since been replaced. |
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Painting of My
Grandparents’ House - 1985 I have done few paintings
in the last 30 years but two that I did were gifts to special people in
Jennifer’s and my life, our parents. The first one was for my
mother, who lived in the little house set at the edge of a tree covered
mountain at the top of Crane’s Nest, Virginia. It is the only house
that I ever knew as my grandpa and grandma’s house. My mother grew up there as
did most of her brothers and sisters. There was water that came into the
house from a very small, but clear, stream and this was piped into the
kitchen. A single faucet over a farm-sized sink provided all of the water
that was needed. On very cold nights the water was left on a little to keep
the pipe from freezing. There was a large
wrap-around porch on two sides. Above the porch there was a gap under the
roof and above the porch. This was a very handy place for my grandpa to store
some tools, a cane, wood bits, and toys. It was very interesting to me to
walk along the porch looking up at the treasures placed above. In later years
there was siding installed and the treasures were gone. As you can imagine, the
porch was where you sat and watched was was going on down the
“holler”. Their house was right at the top. From here you could
see the kids walking to and from school, watch for dad as he came home from
the mines, watch for visitors, and observe life going on for everyone up and
down the hollow. Waiting for their father to
come home from the coal mine was an event. There is a tradition among miners
to leave some kind of treat in the lunchbox to give to the first child to get
to the dad. My grandmother would pack the extra item on purpose so he could
give it to one of the kids. My mother told me that she was especially
attentive and was often the first one there. Occasionally her dad would have
eaten the extra treat on very long days. I guess a hug was almost as good as
a treat and a hug. While waiting for family to
visit in later years, my grandmother would sit at the front window waiting
for car lights to appear down the road. Visiting family was always special. When my mother had a place
of her own in Tennessee she would do the same thing, wait for the lights at
the end of the road hoping that it was family that she knew would soon
arrive. We have images and video of her waiting, just like her mother did,
for that great time when the loved ones would finally arrive. After you
arrive into her waiting arms, you might join her waiting for others, like
your cousins, siblings, aunts and uncles and then the excitement would start
again. In this painting, I
included both of my grandparents waiting on the porch, expectantly, for my
mother’s arrival. A funny side note was that
my mother was so happy and proud of this little 9x12 painting that she took
it to a reunion to show her brothers and sisters. It was no surprise that
they all wanted me to paint one for them (they promised to pay for the blank canvas
- $4). I instead took the painting
to a copy place and had color photocopies made for $2 each and then we bought
inexpensive frames and everyone got their own. The one that I had hanging
in my own house was one of those paper copies and no one was the wiser. |
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When we lived in Germany I dabbled a bit in painting. I had pretty much given up on it but would occasionally do a painting as a gift. I painted this about 30 years ago for my good friend Mary
Jane Hinch Kane who just recently she reminded me of this painting and sent me
a picture of it. Thank you Mary Jane! I can tell that I painted it but just do not remember doing it. I am glad that she saved it and was able to send me a picture. I have been reminiscing about those times all day. They
were good times. |
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This is a painting that I
did for my niece, Jessica.While travelling, her cat on a leash got loose from
her at a rest area and ran into the woods. This was intended to let her see her
cat, Tiger, living happily in the mountains. |
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One of the very few watercolors that I ever did. |
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A very loose Master Copy of
a Jacob van Ruisdael painting while I was in high school, or soon after.
Flowers done in my German
art class. The picture is tilted,
sorry. |
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