6×8″, Oils on sealed, primed hardboard
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.

I’m still continuing on with my exploration of the waterfalls in the Catskill Mountains. Old Mills Falls is exquisite, with a beautiful, large, transparent pool at the base. I really want to go back and do a larger version of this as well. It’s a pretty steep descent to the falls, so I just stuck my little painting box in my backpack and went hands-free.

12×9″, Oils on canvas covered hardboard
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.

Yep, back to Hell’s Hole again in the Devil’s Kitchen area of Platte Clove to do what I seem to enjoy most these days — painting waterfalls! This eastern section of the Catskills is so loaded with waterfalls. Many of them are challenging to get to, but some are roadside and easily accessible.

8×12″, Oils on sealed, primed hardboard
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.

This is the farm where I buy all my fresh produce. Nestled in the Hudson Valley just to the east of the escarpment of the Catskills, they have acres and acres of strawberries, corn, zucchini, and all other kinds of vegetables. The beautiful setting against the mountains is an artist’s dream, and it makes for a dramatic scene under any weather conditions. I happened to catch it this time just as a storm was getting underway. I took a picture and then painted it from the photo, under the roof of my patio in the rain.

6×8″, Oils on canvas covered hardboard
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.

This waterfall in the Catskill Mountains provided the perfect cool, comfortable spot to go painting on a hot day last week! The water was crystal clear and glistened against the moss-covered rocks.

12×16″, Golden Fluid Acrylics on Canson Board
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.

This was painted on location yesterday overlooking the Hudson from the grounds of the beautiful Vanderbilt Mansion property in Hyde Park, New York. A group of us were painting up there behind the mansion. We just about finished our paintings when it started to rain. I was using Golden Fluid Acrylics because I just adore the pigment load and the consistency. It glides across the surface as easily as oils. If it had been any warmer and drier, I’d have switched to the slow drying Open line instead. I figured I’d probably be forced into making the change half way through, but was able to finish up with the Fluids.

This Canson board is one of my favorite painting supports for acrylic. It can be purchased in a number of different colors. I cut it to size, and although it’s not necessary, I size it twice with Golden Matte Medium diluted 20% with water. That decreases the absorbency of the surface, and the paint sits beautifully on top. Once I apply an isolation coat and varnish to the dry painting, the surface has a deep, glossy richness to it like no other, with that lovely MiTientes texture visible. I frame them just like oil paintings on hardboard or stretched canvas.

8×10″, Golden Fluid Acrylics on Canson Board
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.

I went out to the lakeshore very early this morning to try to grab some morning color before a thunderstorm moved in. I was there just in time, because it started to rain just as I was putting the painting away!

6×8″, Oils on sealed, primed hardboard
For purchase information, please email me at JamieWG@aol.com.

It may seem like I’ve fallen off the face of the earth lately, but actually I’ve been so busy painting that I haven’t had a chance to post the paintings! This painting of Kaaterskill High Peak and Round Top was done very early one morning. The contractor who is building my new studio wanted to beat the heat and cut through a masonry doorway at 6:30am! That gave me good incentive to make the most of the early light in the mountains.

There were cows out in the field. I was hoping they’d come close enough for me to be able to see them well enough to put them into the painting, but they stayed way off in the shade. Of course, as soon as I was finished, they all sauntered over to the fence to say hello and see the finished product!

8×16″, Golden Fluid Acrylics on sealed, primed hardboard
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.

This is a plein air painting that I did in May at Garrison Landing. It needed a few minutes of tweaks in the studio before posting and still needed signing, so I had to wait until I had the Fluid Acrylics out again!

I really enjoyed doing this painting; I need to do more street scenes! I so love the serenity and natural beauty of the Hudson Valley that it’s hard to pull myself away from that in order to paint more of our contemporary and man-made environment.

Fluid acrylics are so much fun. When I first started using acrylics, I used heavy bodied paints and diluted them to a more fluid state. It was very frustrating that this would also dilute the pigment load, and the paints would go streaky on me. Then I learned that the Golden Fluid Acrylics are formulated to have a very high pigment load already in that perfect fluid state. I was in heaven! I’ve loved using these ever since. They do dry quickly, so on a warm, dry day of plein air painting, I switch to Golden OPEN. The Fluids are also perfect for underpainting because they dry so quickly. Then I can finish the painting with Golden OPEN, which gives me extended working time and stays wet on my palette. These two products are so much fun that I sometimes wonder why I ever bother with oil paints!

5×7″, Oils on canvas covered hardboard
For purchase information, please email me at JamieWG@aol.com.

This was one of those mornings with more atmosphere than I could dream for. The conditions kept changing dramatically every few minutes, so I picked out what I could of the sky, ground and water, and challenged myself to try to make a cohesive whole out of all those bits!

The highest peak in the painting is Kaaterskill High Peak, and to the right is Round Top. These two peaks dominate the landscape of Kaaterskill Clove, home to the Hudson River School painters…and me!

12×24, Oils on sealed, primed hardboard
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.

If you think you already saw this recently, you did! I decided to work on it more in the studio, so above is (hopefully!) the final image of the completed painting. These long, horizontal formats show so small on the blog page, so here is another image that you can click on to enlarge it a bit:

I love this view of the barns against the eastern escarpment of the Catskill Mountains. This was painted on location, on this warm, breezy day of changing clouds and moving light. I loved the contrast in color temperature between the orangy fields and blue-green mountains, with the red spots of color contributing a nice focal point.