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.
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.
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.
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.
For years my country home was always decorated with pots filled with Geraniums until my youngest daughter suggested that we switch to ‘BEGONIAS’. It was nice to make a change. I really enjoyed diving into this painting - it felt very emotional to me which is reflected in the warm colors and high key.
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.
After a round of Covid and then a heart attack, it feels good to be back in the studio! Many more to come…
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!!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The night before I painted “Sunrise With Heron” I set my alarm for 5 am. The next morning after breakfast, I drove to Boynton Beach to watch the sun come up because I wanted this painting to be as authentic as possible. As the sun started to break the horizon, I photographed this thrilling event to have as reference material for the painting. Everyone should experience this at least once in their lifetime.
Always on the lookout for an interesting subject, I spotted this road paver/tar machine which was parked on the road near my home in Rock Hill, NY. I went back several times to view it and when the light was right, I took several photos to complete the painting.
The interest of this painting was a rickety old wooden bridge which had to be crossed to reach the farm house. This was one of my “Frankenstein” paintings. The river and the rickety bridge wasn’t really there but I felt like the painting needed something else, so I added it in. At first, I didn’t like the way the bridge was coming out so I worked on it and worked on it until I got it right. You can never just change one thing in a painting though. Every time I changed the bridge I had to adjust other things around it to make it fit in. I added foliage or a little something here and there in order to balance it out. Overall, this painting, was well worth the exploration.
Traveling around the Catskill Mountains during the summer of 2020, I passed a large farmhouse with a beautiful silo. On the road leading up to the house was a sign “Guests Invited”. This reminded me of the early days in the Catskills when small farms opened their doors for guests that were being treated for various lung diseases. These small farms gradually grew into the large hotels like the Concord. I just couldn’t resist a photo and a sketch with a small painting following.
When this was painted in 1960, I just graduated medical school and returned from my service in the army. There was a small painting studio near my dad’s dry cleaning store where art lessons were being given, so I signed up for lessons and my first seascape was painted. This was the start of 60 + years of painting.
In Publix, by the exit door, was a bunch of flowers in a green pot that I really liked. I bought it, brought it home and put it with red cup on the windowsill and then waited until the light was just right.
I was coming home from playing golf upstate at Lochmore and drove by a house with a car in the yard with red, white, & blue flowers in it. I loved it but couldn’t stop right then so made a special trip back just to take a picture. I frequently drove by the house after that hoping that there would be something else interesting in the yard.
