Tangerines #6 4x 8 1/2 oil on wood panel

Daisy Still Life 5x5 oil on wood panel

Daisy Still Life. This has got to be the loosest painting I have ever done. I had intended to work on it till it looked finished, but when I got to this point it looked fresh and lively, so I let it go. E-mail me at artistjohnwlong@live.com

Pepper and Salt 5x7 Oil on wood panel

Pepper and salt 5x7 oil on wood panel

Tangerines #5 5x7 oil on wood panel

Pear app 6x6 oil on wood panel

Radish Cup 5x5 oil on wood panel

Radishes always make me think of some little red, scurrying animals with long wagging tails. They are absolutely paintable with their hot red and green coloring. People have painted them for years and eaten them for centuries. E-mail me at artistjohnwlong@live.com

Green Bell Pepper app 6x6 Oil on wood panel

An expert told me that both peppers and tomatoes are fruits, but that is a stretch - if peppers and tomatoes are fruits, they are wearing vegetable drag. I have painted so many peppers, both red ones and green ones, that I am going to start numbering them - this would be #2, and I have up to #9, but I don't think I'll post many more. They have a beautiful coloring and gloss which makes them irresistible to artists. E-mail me at artistjohnwlong@live.com

Pond 5x5 oil on wood panel

This is a misleading picture. It looks like a lake in the Ozarks but it is a pond in Oklahoma. It is neat to be able to edit the world. The pond is no lake and the hill is said to be an Indian mound. One of the things I like about art is that the artist is making his own reality. You create boundaries and rearrange things, moving trees, intensifying colors, just whatever you want.The viewer is stuck with your version of reality. One thing I vividly remember about this spot - it was one of those epiphanies people have - I was a young man spending a Sunday afternoon amusing myself by shooting frogs and snakes that would swim around with their heads sticking up out of the water. Exactly as my painting shows those fluffy white clouds suddenly began to rain, thundering and shooting out lightening. It was time for me to get out of there - but I was too late, and out in the open the lightening struck me to my knees, Biblical tongues of fire flying all about me, when something (God?) told me there is a difference between shooting skeet for fun and sport and killing innocent animals for fun and sport. I wasn't hurt, but I haven't pulled a trigger since. E-mail me at artistjohnwlong@live.com

Tangerine # 4 5x5 oil on wood panel

Tangerine #4 is the last of these, although I have another (#5) it is on a larger wood panel. I think any of these could mix and match. The color intrigues me because it is beautiful and I achieve it through glazes. Click the image for an interesting look at brush strokes. E-mail me at artistjohnwlong@live.com

Tangerines 5x5 oil on wood panel

There is one more coming after this in my Tangerine series because I now have only three left. I bought them to paint/eat at a good price because they have come into season from now till January. They got their name from the Port of Tangier where they were first shipped to Europe. Some folks call them Mandarin Oranges because they are the same color as Chinese emperors wore. I'll paint the remaining three today and post them on Saturday or Sunday. E-mail me at artistjohnwlong@live.com

Two Apples app 5 1/2 x 7 1/4 oil on wood panel

The Dutch have contributed so much to art, spanning the centuries and defying all boundaries. There was Rembrandt with his impasto and VanGogh with his. Vermeer with his smooth surfaces and Mondrian with his. And several hundred others. There doesn't seem to be a Dutch School of painting because they encompass them all, and they are still at it. A dailypainter tends to limit his subect matter and with me it is stillifes. What I have been working up to in this convoluted blog is that the Dutch, who practically invented the still life, would often paint a far distant background to give the viewer some breathing space. With me, a 5x5 (more or less) surface requires near life size subject matter, and by putting the background way back, one does give ones stillife some space. One can E-mail me at artistjohnwlong@live.com

A Cup of Tangerine 5x5 oil on wood panel

I read so many blogs discussing the problems that face the artist in creating a painting, and how they solve them. Although I taught art in the public school system for years, I find it embarrassing to talk about my own process. I think I am too timid and insecure to lay it on the line. I am only able to discuss politics, spirituality, sex and art in a private conversation, so my blog is just about the objects in the painting. I just do not reveal myself easily. That is not so much anti-social as it is for focus. Besides, I have never been too sure of my ability, only that I have a relentless compulsion to do it. E-mail me at artistjohnwlong@live.com

Two Eggs In a Cup 5x5 Acrylic on wood panel

Pear Nocturne 5x5 oil on wood panel

A nocturne, according to Webster, is a piece of art dealing with the night. I came home after dark and the pear was sitting there on the porch rail and in the madness of the moment I painted it and ate it.E-mail me at artistjohnwlong@live.com

Poppy Trio 5x5 Oil on wood panel

This is a quicky, practically a sketch, but I have a deep respect for quickies. When you think of all the painters who have painted poppies - Georgia O'Keefe, Monet,( who did for poppies what Van Gogh did for sunflowers), and even Renaissance painters used them for symbolizing Life or Death. Lofty stuff. I'm sure it was the color... And then, there was the Wizard of Oz, where a field of poppies surrounded the Emerald City. I once was driving down a highway (before interstates) somewhere in Los Angeles, bordered on each side by California Poppies that were catching the sunlight like acres of crushed jewels. Ironically, Poppies have a dark side. Opium. E-Mail me at artistjohnwlong@live.com

Tangerine Pyramid 5x5 oil on wood panel

Tangerines are most closely associated with Christmas stockings, along with ribbon candy - even their scent reminds me of Christmas. Kids love them because they are sweet and easy to peel. I bought a bag of them to paint and I will quit painting them when they are all eaten. Maybe just for the sake of art, I should buy another bag. E-mail me at artistjohnwlong@live.com

IceCream Dish 5x5 Oil on wood panel

W.C.Fields used to tip his had and mutter "Pardon my redundancy". I posted the Ice Cream Dish several weeks ago, but when I ran across it the other day I was displeased and decided to rework and re-post it. When Salvador Dali wrote "Fifty Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship", he revealed that he turned over a finished painting to his wife, who would place it in unexpected places so that he would run upon it and get a clear glance, thereby to see if it needed to be edited in some way. He pointed out that God had created the world in seven days, so he gave himself 7 days to finish a project. I hardly need 7 days to finish a 5x5 painting however, as I'm not competing with God. I would never get it where I really wanted it though, so I get it done and get it out of my sight. E-mail me at artistjohnwlong@live.com

Geraniums 5x5 Oil on wood panel

Deep red geraniums are my favorite to paint. It never takes much work or too much trouble to get these beauties down on a canvas. I have several on hand that could make a pair or a set. E-mail me at artistjohnwlong@live.com

Spilt Crackers 5x5 oil on wood panel

Spilt Crackers was the only title I could come up with because I try not to plug the product of some copy-righted manufacturer with a room full of attorneys . I was once employed by some people who made that mistake on a line of kids furniture. A huge corporation descended upon them and the results were disastrous. E-mail me at artistjohnwlong@live.com

Roses app 7x5 1/2 Acrylic on wood panel

Roses are probably the most popular flower in the world. They are symbols of everthing between the Virgin Mary and Aprodite and Venus. It is also the official flower of several states and governments and a lot of sports teams. It is also known for its scent, and it's thorns. Rose is the word for red in a lot of languages, and sub rosa is a phrase for secret. If a secret meeting is to occur, a rose at the threshold ( i.e. under the rose - sub rosa) indicates where the meeting takes place. E-mail me at artistjohnwlong@live.com

Citrus Row # 5 app3 1/2 x 11 1/2 oil on wood panel

Citrus Row #1 is the first of several I have painted using this oddly shaped wood panel (I still have several pieces like this to deal with. Horizontal compositions, especially this extreme, seem to be a natural for a fruit or vegetable display. E-Mail me at artistjohnwlong@live.com

Copper Pot 5x5 oil on wood panel

This is a copper pot and that is all I know about it. I was collecting copper pieces for a fireplace mantel and would buy anything that I thought would look good and was cheap. Probably there is no real use for it other than decorative. For two bucks that was a bargain.E-mail me at artistjohnwlong@live.com

Seashell #2 5x5 Oil on wood panel

Seashells are to me one of the true wonders of the world. When I was a kid,someone gave me and old conch shell from which I would be transfixed - even transformed, by the sound of the ocean. I was a land-lockedMissouri child). There was also an old lady that my folks knew who had a glass cookie jar on her mantle full of sea urchins she had collected. I had a pretty nice collection when I was living in Florida that got blown away in a hurricane. But when I paint a seashell I am back on that beach at early sunrise. Or sunset, or noon, or whenever. E-mail me at artistjohnwlong@live.com

Row of Apricots 4x12 Oil on wood panel

The Turks, I have been told, use a phrase that translates to " perfect as an apricot in season". That pretty much agrees with my feeling - that really great apricots are grown in the back yard and harvested the instant they ripen. There is also a rumor that you can keep them in a refrigerator if you place them in a plastic bag with bananas. I don't know this this is true because I never had any left over. In Greek mythology, apricot juice is the Nectar of the Gods. E-mail me at artistjohnwlong@live.com

Apple(Red on Red) 6x6 oil on wood panel

This is sort of an experiment. The rule is that cool hues recede and warm hues advance. I wanted this apple to be a little out of the ordinary so I painted everything with the same red, using only values to differentiate the distances. I did have to put a little yellow in the apple. The photo is darker and less red than the painting. E-mail me at artistjohnwlong@live.com

White Pitcher #2 5x5 oil on wood panel

My paintings are only statements. If the viewer likes the picture, then the viewer supplies a message. "Arrangement in Grey and White" is the painting we call "Whistlers Mother". And a painting we call "Melting Watches" is Salvadore Dali's "Persistence of Memory". The object in my painting is the second time I have painted it, and the color in the photo is more intense than in the actual painting. E-mail me at artistjohnwlong@live.com

A Pear Mirror'd app 6x6 oil on wood panel

A Pear Mirror'd did not start out being A Pear Mirror'd. I painted a two-pear still-life, one slightly in front of the other and thought that it looked like two sides of the same pear. One's painting ought to look like what one says it is, so I stuck a framed mirror between them and got A Pear Mirror'd. U. S. shipping free, and you can e-mail me at artistjohnwlong@live.com

Push Pump OilCans app 7 1/2x6 oil on wood panel

It may have been a dream I had, or just a memory. When I found these two old cans, covered with grease and dirt in a dark basement garage, a vivid memory took me back to the sight and smell of an old dirt floor in a big dark room with an open window overlooking a corn field - I think where a shade-tree mechanic worked on my fathers car - this was back in the thirties and I'm sure I was not in school yet. Not an important situation - if it was a dream, nothing disturbing or unusual happened, as a matter of fact I loved the old greasy dirt odor and I wanted to capture it when the sight of these cans jerked me back in time. I did, at least for me. artistjohnwlong@live.com

Two Onions app 4x8 1/2 oil on wood pnel

Onions are indispensable. Carl Sandburg wrote: "Life is like an onion, you peel it off one layer at a time; and sometimes you weep". The Pilgrims brought them over on the Mayflower, but when they landed they found the Indians already had them under cultivation. They seemed to have been developed simultaneously wherever they would thrive.

Two Eggs 5 1/2x6 3/4 oil on wood panel

Scientists, professors, metaphysicists and other blowhards have been pondering the age old question of whether the chicken came first, or the egg. It is either very important or very unimportant. An old joke had an answer: a chicken and an egg were in bed together - in the Biblical sense - and the chicken rolled over and lit a cigarette. The egg said to itself, "well, I guess that answers the question". You can E-mail me at artistjohnwlong@live.com