Friday, March 23, 2007

Scott Coulter


Scott Coulter, Beaten Path
Acrylic on canvas; 24” x 18”

I first became acquainted with Scott Coulter’s work a decade ago, when we were both showing at some of the same venues in Central New York- Including a gallery he ran for a time in Ithaca. In the years since, Scott has devoted much of his time to the arts festival circuit, where his paintings and limited edition prints continue to sell well. A listing of Scott’s current and upcoming shows is here.

Scott’s winding country roads, lush wooded hillsides, sunny, leaf-strewn forest paths, crystal-clear waterways are quiet, inviting, refreshing places, at once comfortable and spectacular. I’m especially impressed with how he handles water. Inspiring, instructive, and something to aspire to, myself.

Scott Coulter’s website is scottcoulter.net.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

An Architect Of Dreams

Thomas Dain was known or characterized, in various circles and at various times of his life, as:

a shy, awkward boy, unsuited to competitive sport, terrified of dancing, but not good at spelling;

a captain of industry whose name may still be found stamped into the manhole covers and storm-drain grates of the Northeast’s largest cities, carved in marble at the entrance to Chaney University’s School of Engineering, and worked in ornate, vine-choked wrought-iron at the rust-bound gates of the largest power plant (long abandoned, now a wealth of modern ruin, frequented by painters, and a popular location for shooting music videos) ever built on the Hudson River;

an environmental depletist decried for his strip mines’ systematic decimation of thousands of acres;

an unabashed romantic, and the husband, for a time, of silent film starlet Claire Cameron;

a member of the Tremont City Council, and an unsuccessful candidate for Governor of New York;

a handsome, neatly-mustachioed man with a direct, piercing gaze, who kept an apartment overlooking Central Park, and cut a dashing figure at openings, premieres, and after-parties;

a pipefitter, carpenter, and sometime mason, often seen in Tremont’s hardware stores and building supply houses wearing muddy overalls, a battered bowler, and a grizzled three-day beard;

a hard negotiator, a cheapskate, thief of millions;

a boss who, if you did your job, would leave you to it and pay on time;

a ceaseless visionary of new ventures, an inventor, the holder of numerous patents, some disputed;

an admitted eccentric, and self-styled ‘architect of dreams’, many of which proved impracticable, or defied articulation entirely, though he succeeded in realizing no few:

The best-known of these, of course, was and remains Dain’s Folly.

Monday, March 19, 2007

Dain's Folly


Dain's Folly
Charcoal, Graphite; 5 1/4" x 9 1/8"

Click on the image for an enlargement.