Off Nicasio Valley Road

I love this early stage of a painting. 
Nothing but flow.
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Here's something I wrote while looking at the picture 
of a scene captured by the photographer and writer
Jim Lindsey who lives on the Atlantic Coast- 
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A conversation with my watch:

Water "Come enjoy our cool shimmering dance."

Stone "We are broken, rough and uneven but hold fast."

Moss "Cling to strength but learn to breathe in water."

Dirt "Accumulate in any opening. The accidental seed will arrive in time."

Tree "I take my chances, one by one. See in the distance? We are myriad"

Cloud "Be soft. Take light. Imagine yourself to be anything."

Me "I am here but I must go."
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And elsewhere --

Here is my advice to a Sabin Howard, a sculptor 
struggling with a committee.

You must convince them of this:
1.) the importance of this scale as it relates to your human audience.

2.) the importance of a dramatic narrative to give context to our shared history.

3.) the powerful emotional forces expressed in the visual poetry of the narrative.

Off Shoreline Highway near Preston Point.

First marks in tune with a new landscape. 
A brush melts line in sweet melody.
Touches what I feel but cannot see.

Simplify!

Analytics suggests that a visitor will click through an average of three pages.  The Splash page, People paintings and Place paintings got most of the views.  In an effort to make the page visit easier and more interesting I've made large changes.  I simplified the entire website to put all the artwork on one page.  How is that?

July Exhibitions continued

The Studio Gallery in San Francisco invited me in to the City for an Urban Paint Out in their 94109 Exhibition.  I painted the restaurant in a beautiful building called the Bell Tower.  Great artists.  Fun exhibition!

Urban Plein Air in 94109

July Exhibitions

Three paintings in exhibitions this month!  

"Michael Stadler Plays Claw Hammer" is at the Chroma Gallery in Santa Rosa.

"The Point Bonita Light" is at the Water Tower Gallery in Mendocino.

"The Bell Tower" is at the Studio Gallery SF in San Francisco.

Recent Work Only

I have changed the website to reflect reasonably good reproductions of recent work only. And I feel pretty good about the progress in my paintings as my methods shift this way and that.  

the TINY Exhibition, Studio Gallery SF

I'm very happy to announce that I have two paintings in the TINY Exhibition curated by Jennifer Farris at the Studio Gallery SF 

Both paintings are 3.5 X 4.5 inches. 
 

Additional Pages

I've included two additional pages.  One for drawings and the other for small work.   Changed the background color and removed the nav button for Home because the name at the top serves the same function.  It also simplifies the navigation sidebar.  I've added more images to most pages.  Should I cap the image count for each page to 18?  Or maybe 18 is the minimum for a page.  I like the white bands and borders around each image to contain information and to frame the image.  It looks like a slideshow.  Gallery pages now open in thumbnail view.  I've moved the small work into the main three galleries, further simplifying navigation.

Ready to go live!

I got email set up and DNS settings correct and propagated.  Weeded out some less than spectacular images.  Got prices and descriptions on all.  Not necessarily the final selection but a pretty good group.  Anne's suggestion to separate drawings and my thought to maybe separate works on paper from the rest.  More stuff to work out.  It's looking good and I'm hopeful.  

A decision to change the Home page image to the same as on my business card. 

And a foiled attempt to include an image with the blog post.  A lot to learn.

Design and construction

I've spent the last few days trying out design formats for presenting the images and the associated information.  The solution I've hit on is to embed title, media, dimensions and authorship into the image itself.  Anne wants machine readable information on each image as well.  So a certain duplication of effort but there are some advantages.   I'm also pondering the idea of limiting the resolution for each image, possibly as low as 640 pixels.  This results in an adequate but less than optimal visual presentation. Not sure if I should go with this idea.  It has the advantage of diminishing the opportunity to copy digital images for private or commercial use elsewhere such as Chinese "Handmade" art factories and American digital printers.  I'm also trying to remember that currently I am paying for server space in two locations, XO.com and Squarespace.com.  So I want to cut one of them soon.  The objective is to reduce that to one website that can be modified without special software and which permits e-commerce. And that is Squarespace, which is working out pretty well.   Disturbing news . . . it appears that I cannot place an image into a blog post.  Hmmm.