August opens with a tremendous response from you guys to the blog with many of you saying you'll be back. Today is one of those busy days where so many elements have to be brought together. To begin with, I will pickup the last works for the show from the framer's at Park Row Gallery in Chatham, NY.
These new works of art are a new direction for me since they are of dancers. The genesis of the idea came from a group show I was in entitled "Vibrations" for Black History Month at the Shellnut Gallery at RPI in Troy, NY. The photos on exhibit of major dancers, like Alvin Ailey and Gregory Hines, were supplied by Norton Owen, director of Archives at Jacob's Pillow in Lenox, MA. He and the Shellnut Gallery director, Mary Udell, suggested I do a series of dancers for a future exhibition there. Taking this motivation on, I created two works on dancers. Included here is "A Roda", which combines my style of "dashilism" brush strokes with the rhythmic swirl found in many of my abstract paintings.
My next stop is meeting with one of my giclee technicians to pickup newly created prints to be available for the show in August. This is a very involved process that requires working closely with someone to see your vision and translate it into the color and intensity of the original painting.
From there I am off to an opening of my friend Elissa Gore's work at the Windham Fine Arts Gallery, where they are having a "plein-aire" day, that includes a dozen other extremely talented artists. She is a terrific painter and an inspiration to me, as well as, being a mentor because of her success in the art world.