Holiday Diptych

oil on canvas

8" x 12"

Merry Christmas, or whatever.

Cardinal

charcoal on paper

7" x 9"

I sketched this little guy today while my students worked vigorously on large-scale installation artworks.  It's amazing what the end of the semester can do for productivity in class.  It's sort of like Santa's workshop right now...they're industrious, I'm round and bearded, we're all eating candy...

Anyhow, I really like birds.  I've got at least a dozen bird stories I could tell at this very moment, but I'll save them for another time.  Or I might forget them.  "What kind of bird are you?"

King of the Hill

oil on canvas

8" x 10"

Large trees depicted on small surfaces look like average-sized trees.

Math.

2" Brush Brotherhood

Cumberland Reflection

oil on canvas

30" x 30"

I want to thank all of you who took part in my "Super-Duper Tuesday" shenanigans.  It was a hoot.

I painted the picture above at the CSX rail yard in Cumberland, Maryland.  Just as I was signing my name in the corner, a big man in a big truck offered me a "dip" of tobacco and asked me if I knew Bob Ross.  I've been asked if I know Bob Ross 891 times.

Never met him...

Go!

Stop.

Super-Duper Tuesday

Super-Duper

Cardinal Red

An offer for my Bloomfield friends...

It's officially basketball season.

Cardinal Red prints are matted, packaged, and ready for your bows and gift bags.  The prints are 8" x 10", matted to 11" x 14" for convenient framing, each signed and numbered.  Cardinal Red prints were limited to an edition of just 100 and are $50 + tax/shipping.

I've got a few dozen prints available, in case you'd like to have your walls decorated prior to a sectional victory. 

If you'd like to purchase, please email your contact information to wyattlegrand@gmail.com with "Cardinal Red" as your title.

Go Cards!

Happy Thanksgiving

Sale

oil on canvas

16" x 20"

Lesson Learned

Whitewater River

oil on canvas

12" x 16"

It's beautiful morning on the fringes of nowhere.  My good pal Larry and I had set out to paint pictures of the river.  We grab our gear, walk down the bank a ways, and get to work with about thirty feet between us.  When I finish my first painting of the river (above), I turn around and immediately begin a second painting of Larry (below).  I do this quite often.  I've got at least a dozen Larry paintings, most featuring his tattered IU ball cap.  I think it's clever, I guess.

Larry, Painting a Picture of Me, Painting the Whitewater River

oil on canvas

8" x 10"

Within about 45 minutes, we pack up and head back to the van with wet paintings in tow.  Larry asks his usual, "What'd ya get?"  I humor him and prop my two paintings up against the door.  He looks at the pictures, looks at me, and looks at the pictures again.  I know Larry well enough to recognize when he's setting up a joke...

He leans in with a slight smirk and says, "Oh...you needed two canvases, huh?" 

Larry props his single painting up between the two of mine...

"Amateur."

Larry's painting of the river and me (on just one canvas).

Thank you Paul Washington.

Relatively Rural Reality

Metamorica

oil on canvas

12" x 16"

I was painting a street scene.  Actually, I was painting a picture of a fire hydrant...half of a small Indiana town just so happened to fall in the background.  Midway through my depiction of Midwestern quaintness, a voice from behind me barked, "What're you doing?"  I turned around to find a ragged woman in a green jacket standing less than ten feet away, peeling raw meat from the carcass of a small animal.  I replied, "Just painting a picture...how are you this evening?"  She walked towards me, elbow deep in what appeared to be some some type of roadkill/dinner/Halloween-decoration endeavor.  With only the stench of death between us, she locked two very squinted eyes upon my bewildered face and said, "I'll show you where they keep the cross."  She walked past me, past the fire hydrant and past the house on the corner.  She didn't look back.  She walked past the church, a long shadow cast to her side, the carcass she carried now plucked clean to the bone.  She crossed the highway and disappeared.  Lumps of meat lie along her path.  

A wraith, a phantom, a ghost...

or Becky...

That was her name, Becky.  Or at least, she was answering to that handle when I crossed paths with her again that same evening, no more than two hours later.  She was sitting at a table catty-cornered to my own at a popular restaurant about ten miles from where I last saw her.  She had transformed into the most charming person in the room, the center of attention among those in her dinner party.  She was wearing the same green jacket, but there was no evidence of the animal remains.  As I left my table and headed for the the door, she discovered me a second time and yelled out, "Hey Picasso!"  I was trapped between her squinty gaze and my own confusion.  She introduced me as the artist from Metamora, the town where we'd had our strange encounter just moments ago.  "Can you believe that," she exclaimed to her tablemates, "an artist from Metamora!"  I smiled and gave a little wave of acknowledgement to Becky and her friends as I tucked my tail in and walked away.  I felt pretty ridiculous for a man without a dead animal in tow.

I left the restaurant dumbfounded.  I walked across the parking lot and then down the street, pondering the evening's paradox and accrediting the irony to my own imagination.  After staring at my steps for several blocks, I picked my chin off my chest just in time to see a silhouette moving towards me.  It moved past a series of dumpsters, past the house on the corner and then past the fire hydrant just a few feet away.  I was frozen.  It made a beeline to where I stood, its shadow now distinct from its alien form.  At my feet crouched a small, ragged animal.  It never looked up.  Before I had a chance to identify the creature, it scurried across the road and out of sight.  I squinted my eyes and peered into the darkness, but it was gone.  

A beast, a brute, a demon...

My head fell forward in another bout of disbelief while my eyes fixated on a new shadow.  "X" marked the spot where I now stood.  I followed the longer of the two lines that had converged beneath my feet.  It slashed across a mailbox, over the hood of a minivan, and towards a brick building to my left.  The shadow crept up the masonry wall, across an air conditioner, and through the open window of a second floor apartment.  When my eyes finally reached the sky and the roof lines that framed it, I discovered a nearly full moon providing the light the shadows needed.  Between the moon and I, a cross.

Hoosiers

oil on canvas

24" x 30"

Picnic Table #43

oil on canvas

12" x 12"

Dead on a Hill

oil on canvas

8" x 10"

Triangles and Squares

oil on canvas 

12" x 12"

Gates

oil on canvas

16" x 20"

Bends

oil on canvas

6" x 8"

Chair, Truck, etc.

oil on canvas

24" x 24"

Progress Street

oil on canvas

12" x 24"

Watch out for those city bush critters.

Slaughterhouse

oil on canvas

11" x 14"

River Road

oil on canvas

20" x 24"

Thank you Brookville, for the hospitality and fried chicken.

Brookville or Bust

I'm looking forward to painting in good ol' Brookville, Indiana this weekend.  It's a beautiful place to roast a weenie, pet a wolf, or float down a river.  It's also a great place to paint pictures of stuff...like concrete chickens.

I'll surely end up with at least a dozen paintings of Midwestern small-town vibe and fall foliage...they'll be framed and ready to hang on your wall, if you're into that sort of thing.  Get 'em while they're still wet on Sunday.

Sunday, October 20th, 1-3pm

Brookville Library Annex 

919 Main Street

Brookville, Indiana

(765) 647-4031

God Invented the Internet

God invented the internet

So we could feel more and think much less

So search for the answers, then place all your bets

On the life your photos best represent

God invented the television screen

To watch all the things we don't dare dream

To entertain ourselves with what once was obscene

While choosing your side of reality

God invented the cellular phone

To be together when we’re all alone

To build tall towers above every home

That connect us with everything wherever we go

God invented us, them, and we

To make phone calls and watch TV

To surf the web and discover that He

Exists only by you and by me

God invented the internet

And root beer floats and credit card debt

And love and forgiveness and the air in our breath

And fear about what's after death

Spring 2020 Workshop

I'm looking forward to next year's New Harmony shenanigans...

Painting Representationally, Unconventionally

Medium: Oil

April 13-14, 2020 / 2-Day Plein Air Workshop 

9 a.m. - 4 p.m. CT

New Harmony Gallery / 507 Church Street / 812-682-3970

Description: Wyatt will share his ideas about plein air painting and demonstrate his typical approaches for creating paintings on location.  There will be a special focus on painting a variety of subjects quickly and loosely with confidence.  Wyatt will also offer creative solutions to common plein air pitfalls, including:  choosing uninteresting subject matter, driving around for an entire day searching for the "perfect scene", painting too small with a dozen different paintbrushes, spending an entire day trying to fix a painting that didn't work from the start, and limiting yourself to subject and style choices over-influenced by painting trends and the collector.  

Level: All levels welcome 

The class will be limited to 15 students.

Click the link below to register through Hoosier Salon.

https://hoosiersalon.org/portfolio/2020-first-brush-of-spring-workshops/

Childish Gambino - Redbone

Judas

7:30 - 8:30

Little Connie will be playing with great volume in the middle of a bean field tonight.  Bring your lawn chair and weenie stick.

6777 East County Road 1100 North, Lewis, Indiana

BBQ

oil on canvas

6" x 8"

"Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you."

Cannonball

Ryan the Diver

oil on canvas

9" x 12

We practiced "inventing" compositions during the Upper Schooner workshop.  It's sort of like telling a lie...but instead of feeling guilty afterward, you feel elated that your picture isn't a boring waste of paint. 

Upper Schooner Lake 1 and 2

oil on canvas

both 8" x 10"

These are two demonstration paintings from this weekend's workshop.  Larry Rudolech and I may have ruined plein air painting for everyone in attendance, but we yelled a lot and ate several sandwiches.

"Obviously, these men are experts."

Here is a funny candid photo from the Upper Schooner plein air workshop.  As you can see, we had a great bunch of students.  Also, as you can see, Larry's head ended up getting sunburnt.  I stepped on a bee.

Graffiti

oil on canvas

14" x 18"

Breaking the law to paint pictures...just a day in the life.

Vessel

oil on canvas

24" x 48"

Shotgun

Rubber Tree

oil on canvas

9" x 12"

When I was a youngin', kids would regularly drive to the spot depicted above and have fist fights after school.  All sorts of other extracurriculars took place on that road less traveled, but I mostly remember the three o'clock caravans to our adolescent idea of conflict resolution.  On one occasion, after a particularly lopsided matchup, every spectator in attendance ended up stuck in the mud while trying to turn their cars around.  Served us right.  

After that day's boxing bout, in an ironic twist, an unlikely team took shape while dislodging the last car from the swampy roadside ditch.  Opponents moments before, now castaways together, the fist fighters were left marooned at the east end of "Rubber Tree Road" with a car and confrontation conundrum.  As the rest of us pulled away from ringside, some type of agreement was reached between the two and a solution soon followed.  A friend and I watched from the rearview as the little Buick bounced and shook its way back onto the gravel path.  The silhouette of a figure followed fast behind through a cloud of exhaust smoke and tire spray.  At the steering wheel of the two-toned hand-me-down sat a scrawny boy with a bloody nose.  Pushing from behind the rear bumper was a formidable bully with bloody knuckles.   We might've had a laugh or two at their expense.  Shame on us.

It was a curious scene in the moments that followed.  A mud-covered teenager walked alongside a mud-covered sedan.  We never found out what was said, but after nearly 100 yards of finger pointing through an open window and what we assumed was some pretty coarse language, the car stopped abruptly and the passenger door swung ajar.  Before pusher became passenger, he bent down and untied his laces.

The victor and the vanquished rode back to town together, one with a wadded t-shirt held to his busted nose the other with his muddy boots held out the window.

How do you like your eggs?

Shade

oil on canvas

12" x 12"

I have several new paintings on display at the Brown County Art Guild in Nashville, Indiana.

Now, hold on to your britches...

If you buy one of my paintings, you'll be treated to a complimentary pancake breakfast at the Hobnob Corner Restaurant.  

promo code: LEGRANDTHEPANCAKEMAN

Expires 8/30/2032

X76-6

Viaduct

oil on canvas

20" x 24"

Hey neighbors, I've got a few Bloomfield paintings left, just in case you need a wall-hangable dose of hometown sentimentalism.  Send your inquiries to wyattlegrand@gmail.com.  Go Cards!

"Show me show me show me how you do that trick"

It might be the most fun you'll ever have painting pictures...

Click here to join the party.

Summertime Improvisation

Mineral

oil on canvas

18" x 24"

Two words—chipseal.

I left a pair of shoes on the side of the road in Mineral...stepped right out of them while backing up for a better look at the picture above.  If you can pry them free, they're yours.

IMI

oil on canvas

9" x 12"

It ain't pretty, but it's one of my favorites from the Bloomfield painting adventure.

The Alley

oil on canvas

16" x 20"

Two Farmers and a Giraffe

Are You Sure?

oil on canvas

9" x 12"

It was a blistering heat.  I'd sweat through my shirt multiples times already...my shorts too.  You know it's hot when you sweat through your shorts.  The sound of bug song and the dusty smell was evidence of the time.  It was 6pm, when late afternoon gives way to early evening in mid-Midwestern summer and everything begins to glow golden.  I was painting a picture while standing in the middle of a skinny gravel road.  My car was parked nearby.  I had pulled over slightly to the right side of the glorified wagon path, but a ditch prevented me from obstructing anything more than bicycle traffic.  It didn't matter.  Nobody was going to drive down that road.  I was absolutely alone for the moment, but I wouldn't be alone for long.  

I was painting with gusto, or at least, an added enthusiasm that the task-at-hand demanded.  The following day, I would show my finished picture alongside dozens more, all created in a five day window and all within a small radius of my hometown, Bloomfield, Indiana.  I had advertised the exhibit as a celebration for the town of Bloomfield and I think it ended up being just that, however, I must admit, it was more of a motivational strategy for myself than a promotion.  I've found local inspiration for years, but I'd always wanted to paint a series of Bloomfield pictures on location, off-the-cuff, and all at once.  I needed an obligation to prevent me from getting lazy and potentially passing on the opportunities the landscapes and landmarks of Bloomfield have been offering me, or at least, those I've yet to take advantage of.  Someone important once said, "the best inspiration is a deadline."  My deadline was less than 24 hours away.  My exhibit would take place in Glover Gymnasium, an institution of Bloomfield basketball and gathering place for the entire community.  

It had been thirty minutes since I'd put brush to canvas.  The scene was a common one for this time of year.  In front of me, about half a football field ahead, rested an old tractor with hay baler in tow.  Round bales were scattered throughout the landscape, each taut and seemingly capable of rolling away in a breeze...I could tell they'd transformed from loose piles of grass and alfalfa the day before.  The tractor now sat posed in front of more piles, carefully raked in rows running away from me and towards a woods in the distance.  With what little I understand about farming and the procedure I was documenting, I concluded that the tractor would be moving soon.  What wasn't in bales soon would be and the tractor that stopped me on that little gravel road would soon be moving faster than I could capture in paint.

The barks of dogs were getting louder.  It only took a minute for them to come into view.  Even at a distance, I could tell they were mongrels.  Both were bright red and likely parented by a pit bull and some other less obvious breed.  They ran alongside an equally bright red pickup truck.  What it's paint had lost in sheen it made up for in stark contrast with the green that surrounded it as it slowly crept through the field and towards me.  I've experienced this sensation at least a hundred times now—the feeling of being discovered and apprehension of the confrontation that would follow.  It may of been a public road, but given the location and circumstance, I may as well have been standing on a back porch.  The truck made a broad turn and crept into my line of sight, initiating a loose conversation through an open window at a distance of thirty feet or so.  

Silence.  The gentle rumble of the engine had stopped abruptly.  I began focusing my eyesight from fairly distant objects to the dark silhouettes inside the cab.  "Howdy!" I yelped.  Silence.  "How are you guys doing today?" I asked with a slight drawl.  I had instantly changed my typical method of talking in hopes of alleviating the tension I could feel between us already.  Finally a response..."Whataya think yer doin?" one of the figures inquired.  I replied, "Just painting a picture."  Silence again.  The man in the passenger seat, nearest me, was having a cigarette and letting the smoke pour over his sweaty skin.  He just stared at me with mouth slightly ajar, the cigarette dangling in a manner that was representative of his overall demeanor...habitually lax.  I was like a wild animal.  I might as well of been a giraffe.  These men hadn't seen a giraffe this close before.  I may have been the first giraffe they'd encountered. 

I knew how to fix this.  I pointed over the hood of the pickup.  "I'm guessing that's your tractor over there?"  The man in the driver seat responded, "Yes, it is."  I carefully removed my nearly completed painting from the easel and turned it towards the men.  They looked at one another.  I could make out a shoulder shrugging type of snicker from the driver.  "Where you from?" he yelled to me.  "I'm from Bloomfield,"  I replied.  I followed with an invitation.  "I'm showing a bunch of paintings tomorrow in town...at the Glover Gymnasium...".  Before I could summon an RSVP, they had the truck in reverse and moving away from me.  They crept backwards for a moment, stopped, and then returned to the exact same spot.  The passenger said,  "Well, we ain't never seen nuttin' like this."  "Just a normal day for me," I responded.  Then the driver chimed in once more, "Where you from?"  I repeated myself.  "I'm from Bloomfield," I said with a smile, recognizing the absurdity of this interaction as if a bystander peering over my own shoulder.  They looked at one another again.  The same giggle ensued.  "Are you sure?" he yelled.  Before I had a chance to make a snarky remark, they were on their way again.

In a few minutes, the men were parked next to my subject, giving the tractor a once-over before beginning their chores.  They were just within earshot.  "Get him!  Go get him!" they barked at their dogs.  The dogs barked at me.  A few minutes later my painting was finished and I was pulling away on the little gravel road.  The tractor started spitting smoke as I rolled past a line of trees and out of sight for the moment.  I found a wide point in the road to make a turnaround and caught a glimpse of myself in my rear-view mirror.  I was wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat.  My curly blonde hair puffed out all around the headband...it was long enough to become entangled with my beard.  I was wearing flip-flops.  In terms of outward appearances, I may have looked a little silly.  The farmers must have noticed how silly I may have looked.  I don't know that I would've been any stranger to them if I had began speaking Cantonese.  I was a giraffe.  As I passed by the men a last time, I waved out the window.  They didn't wave back.

Everybody likes to be liked.  I didn't feel liked as I drove on to my next painting.  As you should expect, and as most of you surely can relate, I have an ego.  It's par for the course of pretending finished pictures are anything more than marks on a surface.  It's a necessity, I believe, for most creative endeavors.  And now, my ego was dented.  My painting wasn't ridiculed nor my prowess questioned, but I felt as if I had been mocked and teased.  On this scorching day, in this small corner of the very community I grew up in, I was a total outsider.  And even though it was only a two against one confrontation, I felt exceedingly outnumbered.  For the rest of the evening, I searched my mind for a solution to an uncomfortable situation that came and went in five minutes time, hours ago.  I concluded that time and my poor memory would be the only remedy.

The next day was a hectic one.  I had 50 wet paintings to sign, frame, and deliver to my Bloomfield exhibit.  From the moment I woke up and well past the moment my show would open, I was in a frenzy.  The hustle and bustle was enough to alleviate my worries about the evening before.  In fact, I hadn't thought of the red truck instigators at all that day.  But just prior to the opening reception, as I studied my body of work from the week, my eyes locked in on just one painting.  I called it "Are You Sure?"—a tongue-in-cheek reference to the prior day's experience and what I believed to be a much better title than "Tractor" or "Evening on the Farm".  Now that I think of it, "Bale Out" would've been a good title.  Either way, as I stood alone in the vastly empty gym, the little picture painted from the little gravel road caught my eye and sparked my memory.  I walked towards the painting as the bad feelings built again.  I remembered the anxiety I felt the night before.  Moreover, I felt embarrassed for being melodramatic about an interaction I'm sure didn't faze the opposing party in the slightest.  Heck, I thought, they were probably still laughing about the encounter at that very moment.  I imagined their dialogue—"An Artist!  Here in Bloomfield!  Ha!".  I felt ridiculous.  Then, I heard footsteps.

I turned my attention from the little painting to the doorway.  Walking towards me were two familiar silhouettes.  A panic swept over me for a moment but quickly faded with an exchange of head nods and half-smiles.  It was two on one again, but this time, I didn't feel outnumbered.  

So, two farmers and a giraffe stood in front of a bunch of pictures in an otherwise empty gymnasium in little Bloomfield, Indiana.  They were the last two people on Earth I imagined would attend my exhibit.  They were also the first two people through the door.

I don't know what all of this means, but I do know we're all in this together.  Sometimes we're right, sometimes we're wrong, and most of the time we're both.  

Midwestern

oil on canvas

20" x 20"

Wrong Side of the

oil on canvas

12" x 16"

I'll share some my paintings from last week, I guess.  I still have a few of them, if you're into this sort of thing.  Please send your purchase inquiries to wyattlegrand@gmail.com.

I'd like to thank my Bloomfield friends once again.  I had a blast.  I'm looking forward to seeing you all at the next show...or the grocery store.

Thanks Bloomfield.

Grand Finale Tonight

And there you have it, folks...

A van full of wet paintings is on its way to Glover Gymnasium.  Mostly wet, that is...these hot summer days have turned my vehicle into an oven of sorts.  I'll probably stop sweating next Tuesday. 

I can't wait to see you all at the show tonight!

Finger food, good music, lots of space for dancing, and a bunch of stuff to look at.  It's going to be a good time.

Tonight! 5-8pm @ Glover Gymnasium, Bloomfield

It Has Begun

I'm a bit behind, but I managed to get a solid start today.  

I've made countless students paint this gazebo.  It's a rude awakening to plein air painting, but they always do a fantastic job.  When I was their age, I'd routinely take advantage of the power outlets available inside the multi-faceted bandstand.  After school, my obnoxious rock group would take stage for anyone in a half mile radius.  We'd manage to get half way through "Smells Like Teen Spirit" before a policemen would pull up and tell us to knock it off with his loudspeaker.  It was awesome.

Cardinal Red and Ready

Cardinal Red prints are matted, packaged, and ready for next week's Bloomfield exhibit.  The prints are 8" x 10", matted to 11" x 14" for convenient framing, each signed and numbered.  Cardinal Red prints are limited to an edition of just 100 and are $50 each.

If you'd like to preorder your Cardinal Red print, please email your contact information to wyattlegrand@gmail.com with Cardinal Red as your subject.  Prints will be available for pickup and purchase at Glover Gymnasium during my Saturday, July 13th Exhibit.  Shipping options are also available.

Go Cards!

Cardinal Red

Cardinal Red

16" x 20"

oil on canvas

On Saturday, July 13th, I will be showing more than 50 plein air paintings of my hometown.  This exhibit will be a community gathering to celebrate the landmarks and landscapes of Bloomfield that I'll attempt to capture on canvas in the days prior (July 8th-12th).  Saturday's festivities start at 5pm at Bloomfield High School's Glover Gymnasium.  

As many of you know, I rarely offer reproductions of my paintings.  However, for this special occasion, I will have prints of Cardinal Red, the painting featured above, available for purchase.  The prints are 8" x 10", matted to 11" x 14" for convenient framing, each signed and numbered.  Cardinal Red prints are limited to an edition of just 100 and are $50 each.

If you'd like to preorder your Cardinal Red print, please email your contact information to wyattlegrand@gmail.com with Cardinal Red as your subject.  Prints will be available for pickup and purchase at Glover Gymnasium during the exhibit.

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