Painted en plein air for the Hooked on the Hook fund-raiser run by Keep Rockland Beautiful and the Palisades Parks Conservancy.

It's not every day that I sell a painting that I've painted en plein air to a person who saw me painting it in both the early stages and as it was beginning to come together in final form. That's what happened with this cloudy morning painting. A friendly woman riding her bike along the path stopped to see what I was doing and we chatted about what I look for in choosing a scene and why I had chosen this one. I mentioned that I was taken that day with the bright greens of the foliage against the backdrop of grey sky and water and subdued atmosphere. I gave her my card and she continued on.

A couple of days later, I received an email asking if the painting was still available. It was. We exchanged another email or two and then I heard from her husband, who said that they would like to purchase the painting.

Today her husband picked up the painting and took it to its new home. What a nice guy! I always wonder if its that particularly nice people are moved by my paintings or nice people in general respond to art.

One of the reasons I've had trouble giving up my connection with doing commissioned portraits, is that a portrait assignment usually means dealing directly with the people involved. Although I enjoy working in solitude, I also like interacting with people. My first impression of doing fine art work was that it would hang in a gallery and be sold to a buyer I never got to meet and that I would be more isolated. After being involved in the fine art side of the art world for a number of years now, I see that happily, at least some of the time,  I do get to meet the people who like and buy my work. It happens often enough that it satisfies my desire to know the people who purchase my paintings. There are also the people who come to receptions and don't buy but admire and talk to me about my work,  the artists I connect with at meetings, receptions and paint-outs, and those who have become close friends.

All in all, any concerns I once had about moving away from portraits toward fine art have dissolved along the way. Add to that my joy in painting scenes that move me, in a style that continues to grow and evolve and comes out of my inner recesses, and I know I've found my niche.