Painting Stone Arch Bridge in the Catskill Mountains

Painting Stone Arch Bridge in the Catskill Mountains

This past weekend I escaped the city heat and drove to the Catskill Mountains to paint a beautiful old structure – Stone Arch Bridge in Sullivan County. It was the second time I painted this bridge, the last time was in late fall when most leaves were brown....
Sketching Abandoned Steam Locomotives in Maine

Sketching Abandoned Steam Locomotives in Maine

I am a fan of old trains, so in late July I went on a sketch adventure to the abandoned locomotives of the Allagash wilderness.  Deep in Maine’s North Woods sit two rusting 100-ton steam engines, remnants of the lumber industry that once supplied twenty percent of...
Rehabilitating a Vintage Byer & Hayes Fountain Pen

Rehabilitating a Vintage Byer & Hayes Fountain Pen

About a year ago I bought a vintage Byer & Hayes fountain pen.  It was in good shape with the original clip with the B&H logo.  The main thing I liked was the super-flexible gold nib for sketching.  Unfortunately the bladder rotted and the ink dried up leaving...
Turner Watercolors at the Mystic Seaport Museum

Turner Watercolors at the Mystic Seaport Museum

I’ve long been a fan of J.M.W. Turner’s huge luminous oils that hang in many museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in my hometown of Manhattan. However I was unaware of his watercolors, and when I learned about the exhibit at the Mystic Seaport Museum I had...
A Train Graveyard in Thorndike, Maine

A Train Graveyard in Thorndike, Maine

This past summer while roaming the Maine countryside looking for enticing scenes for plein air painting I came across a piece of American railway history.  It was the crumbling remains of the Belfast and Moosehead Lake Railroad.   The town was Thorndike, and it sits...
Photographing Wigstock in Tompkins Square Park, 2003

Photographing Wigstock in Tompkins Square Park, 2003

Back when digital cameras began to outsell film cameras, I was still doing street photography with my Leica M4 and developing the film in my apartment.  I have thousands of negatives in storage that document life in Manhattan since I moved here in 1984.  All the...