The paintings for the show are done. I've some few changes to make on two, but the bulk of the labor is finished. The show is at West End Gallery in Corning, NY on July 24th. I'll showcase the upstairs with another artist (Jennifer Fais) while Gary Myers will have the main show downstairs. Gary usually pulls some nice crowds in for his openings; I hope this year isn't any different.

My artist friends know I carry around a little black book. In it I keep track of my painting time, that is, hours when I have a brush or drawing implement in my hand. Hours of work for this week are good. Last year after the kids got out of school they fell off dramatically, and didn't go up until September. I'm hoping to avoid that this year. I've been working on studies, I guess you'd call them. The exercise is to pick a method of working and explore it. Today was one color (Transparent Oxide Red) and try to get the contour and values down. Technically I'm supposed to concentrate on one aspect of the figure, but this pose was so beautiful I couldn't resist trying the whole. Fell far short, I know. My hope is that each failure is a step. In any case the effort is wiped off at the end and I start on another.

Which brings me to last week's PGA Open. That's a leap, but bear with me. I love watching Tiger play. I know how hard he's worked to be #1. (I read about it actually.) If Tiger's playing I'm parked on the couch. He's had all those magical moments in the Masters, the Buick, Arnold's Invitational, the Open in '08 etc. I can remember him winning, I think it was the Amateur in August 1997, before he went pro. But for all that inhuman play, the Open last week was special. How awesome was it to see him struggling? Here's a guy that has taken the game to a new level, yet he still has his bad days. I guess what comforts me is knowing no matter what level you're at, you still struggle and fight and get frustrated and work to reach the next. Of course he's still Tiger and he still had a few of those magic moments in the Open. Very nice, but I enjoyed the frustration on his face more last weekend.

Today Mom called asking me to check out a website. (Mom doesn't do computers or cell phones. Her technology stopped at cable television.) This is the site of a kid who grew up two doors down from us. He's not a kid anymore, and closer to my age than I remember. Also an artist, and I was impressed by his work. He went the academic route and got his MFA, is now teaching in Georgia with some gallery representation. Check it out http://robertsparrowjones.com/home.html and his blog at http://robertsparrowjones.blogspot.com/ I like his paintings. But one thing Bobby keeps mentioning is that we grew up in rural Pennsylvania. I'd call it small town. Of course you didn't have to go far outside said small town to find cows and corn.