New Stuff April 24

Welcome to my Studio!

This blog is designed to share my paintings with interested followers, friends, and family. Just starting up, my main goal is to post some pictures of my work and get feedback. Please comment and join my friends list!

June is coming fast, so I am working hard to complete a good selection of paintings for the Arts in the Park festival June 5th.  Hope to see you in High School Park. (see "Juried Show" link in the menu bar).

More Recent Work:

 (click pic to enlarge)

Fountain of My Youth

9" x 12" Casein paint on muslin over plywood

I am really pleased with this painting of an old water fountain at the edge of a grove of trees in Grant Park, my old neighborhood in Atlanta. Love that heavy duty foot pedal; you can practically feel the torque, hear the creak of gears and gurgle of water. Rusty and grungy as it is, I still want to take a long drink. 

Watch for more fountains. I will be creating a series of fountain paintings over the next few months.

Winter Hill Marina Under the Mystic Power Plant, Dusk

24" x 16" Casein Paint on muslin over plywood

Boston embraces the Charles River for recreational amenities, sailing, tourism, and scenic skyline views.  Just around the elbow of Charlestown, the Mystic River also flows into Boston Bay, a bluer collar counterpart to the Charles, despite its more romantic name. A bit upriver, looking from route 28, the massive Mystic Power Plant dominates the skyline, sprawling above a lonely little boat dock with the chilly name of Winter Hill Marina. It’s a visually arresting scene when the last horizontal rays of sun catch the plant in the evening as the sky deepens into night.  Nature creating portentous beauty out of a utilitarian setting is a contrast I find fascinating. 

Summer Evening, Schuykill Canal Path at Green Lane

16” x 16” Casein on muslin over plywood

The tall bridge in the background was a rail line crossing the Schuykill (pronounced Skoo-kill) River, that connected the manufacturing district of Manayunk to Central Philadelphia. I believe it dates from very early in the 20th century, one of several similar spans across the broad river valleys in Philadelphia, engineering marvels of their day. The strength and grace of the masonry arches references Roman aqueducts, and gives this scene a rather Italian feeling, further enhanced by the tall pine and other lush trees. But the whole setting is also firmly grounded in the grit of American industry, with the old canal, auto and rail bridges, and my favorite, the power line towers. 

6A, Ptown

24” x 12” casein paint on starched muslin covered plywood

This was one of my first paintings on muslin. When painting a large theatrical backdrop as a scenic artist, we stapled the muslin to the floor, then sprayed it down with hot laundry starch to stretch and stiffen it. I used that technique here, but subsequently found it unnecessary for working in this scale, with muslin stretched on plywood. It results in portions of the muslin having slightly veined quality, almost like leather, not unpleasant, but different from subsequent pieces. 

As for the scene itself, there is something about the simplicity of the structure here that really appeals to me. If you’ve vacationed in Provincetown you may recognize the spot, where Bradford street ends at Highway 6A, looking towards the dunes, the bay just beyond and the breakwater to the left. In bright morning light, the contrast of the rigid vertical signposts and the fluid horizontal sweep of sand and sky attracted me, with blue-lavender shadows across the bleached pavement. 

Deep Forest Trail, Twisted Tree

24” x 18” casein paint on muslin over plywood

I’m not so interested in painting dramatic scenery as in finding drama, nuance, and form in everyday scenes. Here I wanted to create a painting where the only structural elements were trees on a densely forested path. The main focus is on the unusually twisted tree to the right, which I got a little obsessed with. The forest canopy is and interesting skein of branches, leaves and filtered light in pale greens and soft yellows. The forest floor and trail are very soft tones of taupe and faded terra-cotta. This painting is probably most like a theatrical backdrop than any other I’ve done.

Bruce Starr

Welcome to my Studio...

This blog is designed to share my paintings with interested followers, friends, and family. Just starting up, my main goal is to post some pictures of my work and get feedback. Please comment and join my friends list!

click on the pictures to see a larger view

RECENT WORK:

Manayunk Hill, Night

16" x 12" casein paint on muslin over plywood

Manayunk is one of Philadelphia's older districts, with narrow streets winding up the steep hills rising along the Schuykill River. Some parts are gentrified, some not. This scene from a summer night seemed to capture something elemental about the flavor of life in the neighborhood.



Path thru Trees and Bramble

16" x 12", casein paint on muslin over plywood

Most often I choose urban scenes with a little grit to them, but this trail through overgrown vines and bramble also caught my eye, especially the arch formed by the trees. It was an October afternoon, with a somewhat overcast sky that imbued the vegetation with blue and purple hues. I'm especially pleased with how the riot of branches in the bramble came out.

Sunset Stripmall USA

24" x 12" casein paint on muslin over plywood

A couple people have told me they know exactly where the photo for this painting was taken, and they were both wrong. This speaks to the universal nature of the scene; it could be pretty much anywhere in the entire country. I love painting scenes at twilight, and this one worked especially well with the intensity of sunset competing with the vividness of neon and florescent signage.

Three Lanes to Jersey

16" x 12" casein paints on muslin over plywood

I love painting bridges and this is my favorite, the Ben Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia. The massive anchor abutments are classically Roman, contrasting nicely with the classically industrial-age rivetted steel criss-cross beams of the span and cable towers. Like the Eiffel Tower, it has a sinewy grace and balance lacking in both older and more modern structures. This view is a little unusual, the roadway from the pedestrian walkway with a slightly fish-eyed perspective of the Philly terminal abutment, the lane-signal archway, and the first tall tower in the twilight haze.

Quay, Deep Twilight

16" x 12"



Scene from New England’s lovely and densely populated coastline. Quiet solitude as dusk turns to darkness on a beautiful inlet, safely lit and guarded by posted regulations, warnings, and statements of liability limitation.

Melting Snow, Sunset, Cambridge

16" x 12" casein paint on muslin over plywood

This past winter was brutal in the Boston area, with storm after storm dumping snow into our neighborhoods. Sunset one afternoon in early February when the melting had just begun, found more slushy mess to contend with, but created a vividly reflective palette of pink, salmon, and yellow in the cold streetscape.



Lone Tree and Wheatfield

24" x 12" casein paint on muslin over plywood

The photograph for this painting was taken on one of my many bicycle rides on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Though much suburban development has overtaken this beautiful area, there are still wide spaces where farmland and quiet backroads dominate the landscape. Coming over a gentle rise, this simple but dramatic view unfolded, with woods on one side giving way to a clear view of a golden wheatfield and a single tree, in the warm late afternoon sunlight.

Afternoon Snow, Charles River

24" x 12" casein paint on muslin over plywood

The day after Christmas, 2010, was the first blizzard of the season. Hiking with a friend along the Charles River in Boston, I took the picture that inspired this painting. The palette is more subdued, almost monochromatic, than most of my current work, but it helps capture the atmosphere of cold wind and beating snow we felt that wintry afternoon.

Station on the Abandoned Line

12" x 8" casein paint on muslin over plywood

A smaller piece, this captures an unexpected view of an old railway station on an abandoned train line in Bryn Athyn PA, north of Philly. The area is now preserved land and the rail line a hiking trail. Coming out of the deep green woods, one sees this station illuminated from behind, in the light of the clearing for the tiny town. A touch of the urban still intrudes, with a car parked in the side lot. 

Manayunk Church, Night

14" x 18", Casein paint on gesso board

One of my first small-scale paintings. Gesso board is much better suited to oil paints than waterbased Casein, a fact I soon discovered and so switched to muslin stretched on plywood. However, I'm still fond of this dramatic night time view of an urban church with lights blazing in the darkened city neighborhood.