Artist Redux

an untitled gestural “overall” abstraction in blues, greeens, yellows, oranges and reds, acrylic on paper, shown slightly cropped from 22×30 size. ©2025 Michael B. Patterson

An untitled gestural abstraction in acrylics, mostly yellows and oranges and reds, with purple accents and green here and there. There is an assertive, heavy, dark drawing for structure, with the in-between parts brightly colored. NOTE: the purple color is very hard to photograph; my phone wasn’t anywhere close, so this shot was taken with a Sony camera, which did better but the purple is still too bright. ©2025 Michael B. Patterson Shown slightly cropped from 22×30" paper

Been a while since I posted any art—been intensely woodshedding, trying to get my aesthetic feet under me. Here are a couple recent efforts.

an untitled gestural “overall” abstraction in blues, greeens, yellows, oranges and reds, acrylic on paper, shown slightly cropped from 22×30 size. ©2025 Michael B. Patterson

An untitled gestural abstraction in acrylics, mostly yellows and oranges and reds, with purple accents and green here and there. There is an assertive, heavy, dark drawing for structure, with the in-between parts brightly colored. NOTE: the purple color is very hard to photograph; my phone wasn’t anywhere close, so this shot was taken with a Sony camera, which did better but the purple is still too bright. ©2025 Michael B. Patterson Shown slightly cropped from 22×30" paper

Been a while since I posted any art—been intensely woodshedding, trying to get my aesthetic feet under me. Here are a couple recent efforts.

sunlight filtered through overhead vegetation, making patterned shadows on the gravel road surface.

the kind of random mottling I sometimes try to paint

a scattering of mostly-green apples fallen from a roadside tree, illuminated by the slanting late afternoon sun

roadside apples

solitary red clover plant bravely blooming in the fall by the side of a dirt road

Vermont State Flower

Beaver Pond, sans beavers. There is a huge beaver-built dam, but the landowner has breached it so the pond is never as full as it used to be. Also, a power line runs across the upper part of the image, I wish it wasn’t there.

Scenes from my walk a couple days ago, more in replies. Read the ALT text.

Nice painting. Good painting, actually.

A literal fascist and some school kids are killed by gunfire on the same day, and the nation mourns the literal fascist, and writes off the dead children as the cost of the Second Amendment. As America collapses it’s no comfort that collectively we fucking deserve it.

Detail of an elaborate Mansard roof somewhere in lower Manhattan

The Flatiron Building

decorative grillwork on old Manhattan building. Sorry, I don’t remember which, and am too lazy to look it up.

cigar store “indians,” pedestrian reflected in window they’re behind

old skyscraper seen at an angle through tree limbs

an old skyscraper in NYC

a street scene in lower Manhattan in the early 1990s. Delivery trucks, cars, a few people, 10-or-so story buildings in the west 20s.

No paintings to show you, but going through old photos I found these, from a brief trip to NYC sometime in the early ’90s. Scanned from film with Nikon Coolscan scanner in 2000. Originally shot with Pentax K-1000 and the standard f/1.7 lens that came with it, no record of what film. More in replies.

Newsom knows that there will be no place for him in public life if Trump destroys our democracy. It’s a mystery to me why other Democratic politicians don’t quite get that, because there will be no place in public life—or at least no power—for *any* of them if Trump succeeds.

Or of basic logic. How could one be confident of that result? He’s not that stupid so I’m starting to lean toward malign.

Your take makes much more sense than that “science” explanation, because even looking at a line drawing, the peripheral (image falling off of fovea) parts will still be indistinct. The rough sketch leaves room for interpretation.

It’s important for professional Democrats (and everyone, really) to recognize that these people are not a loyal opposition making good faith efforts to enact reforms they believe will make the country better for people who live in it. They are the enemies of free society, intent on shutting it down

guaranteed to be imitated by you know who

The Moon in the original image, over 8500 pixels wide (about 0.25 arc sec per pixel—and there’s near single-pixel detail in there!—see replies for a blown-up sample. It was composited from 6 images, each produced by the “lucky imaging” technique combining the best 1024 frames each from 4,096 recorded. The Schupmann telescope was operating at f10. Camera was a ZWO ASI1600MM. Thomas used Autostakkert to select, align, and stack the images, Registax to apply wavelet processing, and Photoshop Elements to composite the full image and adjust levels. I applied a very slight curve to increase contrast in the shadow areas for posting here.

🔭. My friend Thomas Spirock captured this spectacular image of the near-full moon a couple nights ago, using the 13” Schupmann telescope at Stellafane. As shown here it’s downsampled to 30% size, and jpg compressed for posting. Much more about it in ALT text and some full-res details in replies.

oh, ooohh, oh, OH, OH, OOOOH.

[My kind neighbor provided this. My love, inexplicably, did not want any of it, and I ate the whole thing. That big slice went on my chicken burger last night, which needed no other condiment.]

something by Heinlein that shaped me only in the sense of my eventual rejection of his worldview

old enough to remember Kent State, full of forboding

Everything I do now is experimental; I’m slowly building a new visual vocabulary and grammar. This could hardly be more different (unless I suddenly channeled Vermeer or someone) from the earlier image. Sorry for bad photo, too lazy to make a better setup for that. See ALT text for more.

a very ripe, very juicy peach, cut in half, with a bite out of one of the halves, on a small white saucer against a near-black background

These days any good thing gets my full attention, and at the moment that good thing is that this is the best summer for peaches in a while. The regular less expensive non-Amish, non-novelty-shape, Eastern peaches making their way into our local grocery are just terrific,

The skull lurking in there wasn’t directly intended but I sort of encouraged it after noticing it was present.

I mean, I think it’s mine.

Thank you. I did not intend the skull, but it showed up and I recognized it.