What Oil Paint Can Do
Eight subjects. One medium. All of it learnable.
Before you scroll through these paintings, I want to say something directly to the part of you that is already feeling intimidated.
These paintings are not here to impress you. They are here to show you what becomes possible — not immediately, not in a single weekend course, but over time, with the right foundation and the willingness to keep going.
Every subject you see on this page — the mountain landscapes, the wildlife, the florals, the portraits, the abstracts — requires the same fundamental skills. Light. Color. Composition. The trained eye that learns to see what is actually there rather than what it expects to find.
Those skills are learnable. I know this because I teach them. I also know it because I did not paint a single thing for thirty years — and then returned to the canvas at 83 and painted everything you see here (and a total of over 100 different paintings) except the Prague which was painted in 1974.
The landscape is where we begin. Everything else follows from there.
Scroll through. Let yourself want this. Then come back and we will talk about beginning.
Landscapes
This is what you will learn to paint
The idea for this painting started from a photograph of a snowy Canadian Rocky Mountain scene given to me by a friend. I made it into a summer scene with a lake that was not there.
A dramatic mountain scene with mists hanging in the treed slopes painted from a friend's photo.
An Autum Waterfall, inspired and painted from a summer photo of a wilderness waterfall.
Moonrise at Sunset in the Mountains, entirely from my imagination.
The Stark Beauty of Winter
This painting started from a photograph taken from the back of my home in the woods several years ago on a cool winter's morning. The use of color tone variation and the relative size and details of the trees created the illusion of depth and distance.
Wildlife
Oil paints can do this!
Master of Darkness, almost entirely black, yet the details are present. The anatomic details are present though muted and are somewhat more obvious when looking at the actual painting. I had never attempted to paint something this dark before. The challenge was not adding darkness - it was finding the light that lives inside it. Every visible edge, every whisker, every reflected highlight in those eyes had to be discovered rather than invented. This painting taught me more about seeing than almost anything I have made.
Florals
Flowers are where color lives.
Bearded Iris
Peony center
Unseen beauty
Look inside
Himalayan blue poppies.
Portraits
The people you love made permanent.
The people you love made permanent. A portrait is not a photograph — it is how you truly see someone.
Portraits intimidate almost every beginner. They intimidated me too. Look at these and understand that what you are seeing is not talent — it is trained observation, applied to a face. For portraits and animal pictures, I always start with the eyes, If they are wrong, I won't attempt to complete the painting.
Abstracts
You don't have to paint what you see except in your mind's eye.
A blending of warm colors
Infinite curvature
Serenity in color and shape and texture
Still Life
The objects around you are worthy subjects for painting.
The warm glow of a burning lamp light
Some of the beauty in the ocean
The beauty of orchids and a jade bowl
Animals
The animals you love deserve to be painted and remembered.
A beautiful stallion
Our love for animals
The majesty of horses
Architectural
Places hold stories. Oil paint holds them together.
From a photo of Prague and the Moldau River with a building move from the right side of the river to the left side of the river and a sky that I photographed from the fantail of an aircraft carrier returning from Vietnam, painted in 1974.
From a memorable trip to France
Impressions of Louisville Kentucky inspired by Turner, the English painter.
