The House Was Next To A White Pine

 

BLAST

 

Blast

Acrylic and Mixed Media on Canvas

36”x48”

2021

I did this painting back in 2021 feeling the impact of the Pandemic and the loss of my job.  I feel that it’s been “updated in relevance” with the current lack of humanity being displayed in our country and around the world.  A mutual sense of disappointment! 

At The MET, The American Wing

 

The Toilers of the Sea

Albert Pinkham Ryder

Oil on Canvas

1885

Gulf Stream

Winslow Homer

Oil on Canvas 

1906

Winter, Monhegan Island

Rockwell Kent

Oil on Canvas 

1904

At the Met today looking at some of the most iconic American paintings in the collection that I have only seen as photographs since I was in undergraduate art school. 

In the Met literature on the painting, The Toilers of the Sea, it says that a sea-captain friend once observed that Ryder would study the moon on the Hudson River to capture "moonlight effects."  I like this, having just stood at Linden Terrace at the fort overlooking the Hudson.  Beautiful.

Drawing

 

Working on my next children’s book

Stay tuned!

New Painting

 

Forgotten Wind

Acrylic, Pencil, Ink and Organic Materials on Canvas

30” X 48”

2025

Selfie of me working on Forgotten Wind on site.  A really windy day in Erie, Colorado. Painting on the East Side Art Institute property.  The painting and easel both getting blown over numerous times despite adding anchoring weight. Various ground materials are now incorporated into the painting.  

The Beekeeper

My new children’s s book The Beekeeper is now available.  Follow the link to my website below for more information and where to purchase.

https://flloydsobczak.com/

Space Walk - A Sketch In Time

 

While I was working on this quick sketch I thought back to when I was a kid in Buffalo looking up from our front porch and watching with complete wonder in October 1957 when Sputnik blinked by in the night sky over us.  Total silence from both kids and adults.  This was a far reaching, new event for our world. It was amazing and sparked a lifelong enthusiasm in me for all things space. Who would have thought where this would lead.

Art Worker / Art Assistant

 

I came across this video on Van Neistat's Spiritied Man Youtube channel. It struck a cord since I was and art worker back in the mid 1980's to Vitto Acconci as he was working at Artpark in Lewiston, NY building an under and ground level installation called Sub-Urb.  At the time we were called art assistants.  This proved to be one of my most memorable art experiences.  Vitto was amazing, charming, funny and completely devoted to the project at hand and very grateful to the people helping him construct this massive work.  Amazing summer.  His lead assistant John Tagiuri was also an amazing creative.  Getting this project from concept to reality with Vitto and John under challenging conditions was one of the most exciting events for me as a graduate art student.

Phantom Peaks - New Painting

Peaks Climbed, Peaks Remembered, Peaks Only Imagined

Left Behind

Left Behind

30” x 48”

Acrylic on Canvas

2023

Painting En Plein Air and Then Some

Working on a painting of an aging, well-used metal and wood shed on the East Side Art Institute property near my home in Colorado.  Starting with a sketch of the shed and then getting that image onto the canvas before the canvas was hauled out to the site and the actual painting begun.

It’s a larger canvas, 30”x48” so the process needed to be a bit fast since it being a hot day and the acrylic paint I was using had to be applied rapidly before everything dried.

That was it after working on it for two separate days.  Now for a session in the studio.  

 Almost there.  I’ll go back through it and add some detail.

The Big Fish

Recently my wife gave me this collection of writings on and by David Lynch.  Since I'm a big fan of Lynch it was great being able to start browsing through these as soon as I got them.  My favorite one at the moment is "Catching The Big Fish", mainly because it deals with creativity and how Lynch approaches the whole creative process.  A dedicated practitioner of TM he puts great emphasis on using meditation as a vehicle to go within and catch ideas or fragments of ideas where they live, or dwell, or develop, however you want to look at it.  His writings give you the confidence to trust the process and go with it to see your ideas come to fruition as you slowly dial back the noise, stress and distractions of life.  One of the clearest explanations of working the creative process that I've come across.  Lynch, along with his work in cinema is a  painter and advocate of the "Art Life" and being dedicated to that life and the work that it entails. I highly recommend this book. I also have it on Audible so I can listen to while I drive.  Great stuff!

I Love Robots

 

A Time and Place

I recently became re-aquainted with the paintings of Winston Churchill. Not an artist by profession, mainly self-taught, he did his paintings as a form of self preservation to ward off the "Black Dog" of depression as he called it and the pure love of "Brushes and Paints".  Churchill had a studio at his home, Chartwell, but he spent a considerable amount of time "en plein air", painting outdoors not only at his estate but wherever he traveled in the world. There is a memorable painting he did in Marrakech during WWII that he gave as a present to President Franklin Roosevelt.

Winter Sunshine, Chartwell

My favorite painting by Churchill is "Winter Sunshine, Chartwell 1924/1925".  His home is portrayed in almost blinding sunshine reflecting off the snow in the landscape.  The colors of the brick at Chartwell gleam in the light.  The brushwork is impressionistic and bold.

Churchill Self Portrait

I have not spent much time plein air painting but I plan to amend that.  To be able to sit immersed in a landscape, be part of it at a specific time and place seems to me to be a fantastic way of being fully engaged in this world and as Churchill a mode of finding some peace in a very challenging time.

Past Meets Present

Came across this haunting image of a nurse during the Influenza Epidemic of 1918.

The similarity of preventative advice is also striking.

Edvard Munch
Self-Portrait with the Spanish Flu 1919

I'm reading Katherine Anne Porter's short story that takes place in in Denver, Colorado during the influenza epidemic of 1918.  Porter contracted the flu while living in Denver where she wrote for The Rocky Mountain News 

At the Abby of the Genesee

Pages From a Naturalist's Notebook

Where's Jimmy

Recently my good friend James made the pilgrimage to Taliesin West in Scottsdale, AZ and was kind enough to send me these wonderful images.  Unquestionably my favorite Frank Lloyd Wright architectural wonder.  I have not yet seen Fallingwater so until that time I hold Taliesin West as the most pure example of a series of structures so in sync with the surrounding natural environment that they look like architectural seeds had been tossed over the raw desert landscape and the buildings sprouted fully formed from the desert floor.  At times it is hard to distinguish where the landscape ends and the buildings begin as was Mr. Wright's intent with the masterful use of field stone, timber, concrete and color.  Such strikingly pure simplicity of design and construction is today rarely seen.  The only other building that I have visited that also possesses such as strong sense of place for different design reasons is Jefferson's Monticello.

Brother James

Along for the Ride

Dennis Hopper in New Mexico, back in the 70's
Came across the documentary "Along for the Ride on Hulu the other day.
Amazing film about Hopper's creative journeys as seen through the eyes of his Right Hand Man, Satya de la Manitou.

Shuffle Off To Buffalo

In Buffalo this Thanksgiving with family to see my Son Avery perform in Hamilton at the Shea's Performing Arts Center.  An amazing evening for all.