Watering Cans

My summer home has several potted plants securely tied to the railing so the wind won’t blow them off in a storm. We also keep 3 ‘WATERING CANS’ on the deck to catch rain water then if any plants begin to droop they can be quickly hydrated.


Begonias

Please place these ‘BEGONIAS’ on a window sill but not in direct sunlight as the sun will spoil the leaves & color.  


Barn with Red Roof

Living in the Catskills 6 months out of the year, which is a portion of the lower Adirondack landscape, we have farms, rivers and natural beauty to paint. This particular farm caught my attention because  the planted furrows of corn weren’t planted instraight lines, like most farms, but curved leading toward the farm house. The farm house was nestled well back towards the tree line. It  was an interesting subject to photograph and paint.


Shielded

This past spring I was with Ellie, my wife and muse, in Delray Market Place shopping when we stopped at this lovely outdoor floral display. I had a talk with the curator and asked him how is he going to keep the flowers fresh for the weekend. He told me they should be  ‘SHIELDED’ from direct sunlight, using umbrellas, and kept away from heat and drafts because they too will help to quicken their demise. After our talk with him we continued to shop and left with a HAPPY!!! Colorful Bouquet.


This Old Tree

What can I say about this “Old Tree”. It’s impressive in size, stately looking, majestic and regal, and it surrounds itself with great nobility with Its branches always reaching for the sky. I discovered this tree playing golf this summer at Tarry Brae golf course in South Fallsburg New York and photographed it several times, on different occasions, to make a composite picture for painting.


Two Roses

I had lunch guests, at our golf club, on the second day of Hanakkau and they brought a beautiful little blue bowel with 2 roses as a gift.  I rearranged the flowers, altered their colors a bit and immortalized them on canvas. 


Setting Sun

I was listening to a conversation between two psychiatrists, and they were talking about memory. With short term memory you can pretty much remember details, but with long-term memory you may remember the incident but as much as you think you can recall the details they just seem to disappear. On a vacation I remember the sun slipping into the ocean at dusk. I can try to remember the brilliant colors and emotionally sense how I felt but when I sat down at the easel to paint I suddenly realized I couldn’t visualize all fine points. I recalled the incident but not the specifics. In my computer are hundreds of photos. I found the photo of the ‘setting sun’ and used it as a reference guide. The resulting painting is the Setting Sun. 


Turbulent Sea

The ocean in South Florida, the area from Miami up to around Port St. Lucie, is usually pretty calm. It’s good for swimming, when the weather is warm, maybe a little surfing if the waves cooperate and when the winds up - kite sailing. You really have to wait until a minor tropical storm like Ophilia to skirt the southern East Coast to get to see the ocean riled up. It’s really tough to remember the sea rough unless you have a camera. The resulting painting is titled Turbulent Sea. 


About “House by the Lake”

There are lakes galore in Sullivan County so on one of my excursions I found this Lonely Looking House at Yankee Lake and decided to keep it company by painting it.


About “Breezy”

 It’s the summer of 2023 and the pandemic is over.  The hotels at the beach in Palm Beach County are filling up again and they are putting out their cabanas and umbrellas for a day of fun. The day that I visited Boynton Beach the seagulls were flying and zooming in and out with a full breeze blowing and the beach people were struggling to keep the their umbrellas from flying away. The umbrellas were lined up in a row and it just seemed perfect for a quick sketch and a photo - the result was… “Breezy” at the beach.


About “Squashed”

Fall is the transitional season from summer to winter.  It is at this time of the year that the outside temperature gets cooler, leaves begin to change color and farmers begin to harvest  fruits and vegetables and in particular gourds.  I was at a farmers market, in Kauneonga New York, where I noticed an open crate of gourds full of color and shapes- SQUASHED- together, a great subject to paint.  A photo and quick sketch resulted in my new painting… ‘SQUASHED’.


About “Roses”

​Florals are a favorite subject of mine to paint. I saw this “Bucket of Roses”
at a local nursery and it just had to be painted.


About “Ranunculus”

It’s Saturday and I am not playing golf so I decided to check out the florals in Publix. They had a beautiful display of “Ranunculus”. Never heard of this flower but was so impressed that I had to paint them and I had a lot of fun.


About “Catskill Farm”

There  are numerous farms in the catskill area that are paintable.
This farm demonstrated fields of clover planted to help restore the richness of the soil.


About “Halloween”

Ellie and I took a ride in the “country” (the Catskills) to see the fall leaves changing color, October 2022. It was a sight to behold. The colors were beautiful.

We were traveling on route 17B, going towards Jeffersonville  for lunch, and where it forms a junction with Rt 52, which goes up to Villaroma golf club & hotel, a farmer left his Holloween decorated jalopy on his lawn. In the corner of my eye I saw it but with traffic I had to keep going several miles until I could turn around. I traveled back and parked in his driveway to sketch and photograph this paintable treasure.

Motto: Always have your camera ready at hand to capture inspirational subjects. 




About “Drip Dry”

Clothes drying on a line is a very common subject for most artists. I tried 3 times with different photographs, same subject, and nothing clicked until I watched West Side Story and I saw a great backyard symphony of clothes. I snapped a picture of this wonderful urban landscape , abstracted it, put it into Photoshop, and after about 10 different attempts at cropping, I came up with the subject that I painted. I had a lot of fun doing this painting, so please enjoy it.



About “Rocky Point”

Hiking off-road a while back, I came across this lovely rocky picnic area with a delightful cool stream. I remember that Ellie and I ate lunch there and then dangled our feet in the cool water. It was a wonderful afternoon.



About “Catskill Summer”

With all of my setbacks in 2021 and 2022, replacing one knee and having surgery for a fractured wrist, I remained in Florida to recuperate longer than usual. But now that Ellie and I will be heading North at the end of the month, I was so excited about returning home to the Catskills that this landscape painting came pouring out of me! My wrist still hasn’t healed completely, but what the heck… I can still paint!!  


About “Winter on the Intracoastal”

I was sitting by the Florida intracoastal near Ft. Lauderdale having a soda when a lovely sailboat passed by. I made a quick sketch, took a photo, and voila… I was back in the studio to make this painting.


About “Homeless”

One day at the Museum of Natural History in New York City, I saw a homeless man sitting on the steps. I sat a little ways away from him and waited for the light to be just right and then took some photos. 

You have to have your camera in your pocket at all times. You never know when something good is going to pop up. You need to have patience for when the time is just right. 


About “Daily Catch”

I attacked this painting so many times. The basis of this painting was a photo I took of 3 fishing boats docked in a marina. I tried and tried and tried to get it to look the way I wanted but just wasn’t satisfied. I finally figured out a way to crop the photo in such a way that I was able to get all 3 boats together in one view and was able to continue with the painting. 

Sometimes you see something that could possibly be a good painting and you take a photo. But then you have to crop it, to make it a great painting. I never paint something exactly like the photo. I always add the “Janow” touch. 


About “American Flag”

The interest of these paintings is that we are living in a wonderful country and our flag will always be the banner of freedom and democracy. Both of these paintings have been donated to the post office in Rock Hill, NY and proudly hang there for all to enjoy.


About “NY Harbor Triptych”

I was at a conference near Battery Park, at the tip of Manhattan, and after the meeting I took photos galore of the tug boats flitting by. I framed the famous Watch Tower, the Statue of Liberty and the Verrazano Bridge in the backgrounds. Wow!!! What a day!!! These 3 paintings are meant to hang side by side as a triptych.

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