Painting My World

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches. This male Mourning Warbler was one of my highlights in 2024. First heard and spotted on May 28th, it sang loudly over the course of 2-3 weeks in one corner of my woods. I never spotted the female, but I suspect she was around due to the longevity of the male’s presence. The last date I heard the male singing was July 1st.  Mourning Warblers require heterogeneous second-growth forests. The shrubby hillside area where this bird hung out contains quaking aspens, crabapples, birches, a young red oak, a scotch pine, red and white pines, spruce, diamond and pussy willows, and neighboring European buckthorn. Generally, the area is clear of a dense understory; large-leaved asters cover a fair portion of nearby sunny spots. A small brush pile, a large pine needle pile, and a fallen spruce skirt the edges where this bird lingered. Part of the space was once completely covered with invasive common tansy. Having removed 99% of that, it’s nice to see the asters regain s

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches. Just before the arrival of spring in 2018, American Crows were creating a ruckus outside of my window while I was eating breakfast. Never one to miss an opportunity to explore the reason why crows are in a tizzy, the commotion led me to observe this Great Gray Owl perched in a tree just feet away from my house. It stayed low in the branches and slowly moved southbound from tree to tree. By the time I got dressed for the outdoors, the owl was perched across the road in a dense thicket, well hidden. The crows had moved on by then. The silence of the winter’s morning, except for a passerby or two, left me alone with this beautiful owl, and I was able to snap some decent photographs.  My yard has its share of voles, one of this bird’s favorite food. Vole tunnels abound and are especially visible after the first snowfall of the season, as long as it’s a light snowfall. One or two inches of snow will oftentimes display dozens of criss-crossing, irregular pattern

Minnesota State Fair Juried Art Exhibition,  Aug. 22 - Labor Day, 2024 First Glance Event: Tues., Aug. 20, 2024, 5:00 - 6:30 p.m. Fine Arts Building (the corner of Randall Ave. and Cosgrove St.) Minnesota State Fairgrounds The Minnesota State Fair Foundation 501(c)(3) invites artists, friends, family and art enthusiasts to support the future of the arts at the Minnesota State Fair through the ticketed event, First Glance. This is your chance to get a first look at the selected works and purchase artwork prior to the Minnesota State Fair opening. Tickets are available for purchase at msffoundation.org or by calling (651) 288-4323. All attendees for the First Glance Event must have a ticket.  Showing "Superior Reflections" Oil, 12 x 24 inches Artwork will be on view for the duration of the Minnesota State Fair. Entrance to the Fine Arts Building is free with your State Fair ticket during regular State Fair hours.

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches.      This is an oil painting of a female Brewer’s Blackbird, a species of bird quite unfamiliar to me. I am grateful for the research available, there’s always more to learn!       Depending on what part of the country you live in, these birds can be common and perhaps a nuisance as they await alongside humans for the opening of big box stores. In Seattle, for instance, once the doors open at a mega-superstore, they fly in to seek shelter from the elements or to score crumbs off the floor from its indoor café.       My experience with Brewer’s Blackbirds is very different. I’ve never seen them waiting for stores to open, let alone hanging out anywhere near them in my area. The invasive House Sparrow makes up for that. But on July 5th, I observed two female Brewer's Blackbirds tending to a nesting site in Sax-Zim Bog in northern Minnesota, a location far from urbanization.       The two blackbirds were near a roadside adjacent to agricultural fields. One

Showing "Ballyhoo" – 16 x 12 inches – oil. Art on the Edge, 18th Annual Juried Exhibition Aug. 8 - Sept. 9, 2024 The Edge Gallery 101 2nd Ave. Bigfork, MN 56628

  Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches. “The bluebird comes, and with his warble drills the ice,  and sets free the rivers and ponds and frozen ground.” - Henry David Thoreau        The Eastern Bluebird belongs to the family of thrushes, and is one of 167 species of thrushes found throughout the world. In North America, its arrival in spring is a welcome sight to those that live in the open country, and a trip to Wild River State Park in May of this year brought several sightings of Eastern Bluebirds. The male depicted in my painting above was hanging around a cavity in an old pine tree (photo below) along the Amador Prairie Loop, alongside a female.       These days, most people associate bluebirds with nest boxes because of efforts to save the species from extinction. Nest boxes were erected all over eastern North America and Bermuda from the 1970s and onward to help the bluebird when it was discovered that two invasive species, House Sparrows and European Starlings, were outcompeting them fo

  June 25 - July 24, 2024. Duluth Art Institute's Annual Members' Show US Bank Building 130 W Superior St., Suite 400 Duluth, MN 55802 Free and open to the public

 Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches.      Male Hooded Mergansers have interesting mating dances, they’re worth a look on youtube and may make this bird memorable, especially if you've never seen one. This particular lone merganser visited my neck of the woods just after 7 am on Monday, April 29th. I was able to take several photos while disguised in dark clothing and hiding behind trees. The noise of the wind, rain, and rushing creek helped too, but I am quite certain this duck knew of my presence even though I oftentimes like to think I'm invisible. It is arrogant, or perhaps delusional, but sometimes I get lucky.       Luck allowed me to blend in with a tree, so much so that I became a tree while photographing this bird. Soon, two gray squirrels were at my feet. Not wanting to get squirrelitis (is that a thing?), I was going to have to move because I didn’t want them realizing I wasn’t a tree after it was too late. This meant sacrificing my cover. But it was either that or my life.

  Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches. I have determined that this bird, the male Bobolink, is my father-in-law's favorite bird. Why? He is a man, his name is Bob, and he is a passionate golfer. Sometimes in life, a little humor and a break from the norm can be a welcome reprieve. Happy Friday, everyone! Or Saturday, depending on where you are in the world ;)

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches.      For the first time in ten winters at my home in Duluth, MN, American Tree Sparrows have stuck around all season, and that is most likely because we had very little snowfall. Just how little? Before the snowstorm of March 25th, Duluth was over 40 inches below normal, giving these seed-loving birds lots of areas to forage from bare ground, month after month.       In addition to a generally snowless winter, Duluth’s just experienced its second warmest winter on record. In all likelihood, the record would have fallen had the current weather station’s locale been in the same spot as it was in 1877-78, the winter that still covets first place. Currently, official temperatures are recorded at the Duluth International Airport, but it is approximately 5 miles further inland from the old weather station on Superior Street, just 1000 feet from Lake Superior. If anyone took temperature records at the old location, it would be interesting to know if the record was

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches.      Almost 8-1/2 years after moving to our home in Duluth, I finally saw wild turkeys in my yard. But if I had lived here in the early 1970s, I wouldn’t have seen any because they were wiped out by hunting and habitat loss throughout all of Minnesota.       Thankfully, enough people cared about their return, and efforts to reintroduce turkeys to Minnesota by the DNR were successful in 1973 when twenty-nine wild birds were transported from Missouri to southeastern Minnesota. Eventually, that small flock grew and more turkeys were moved to other parts of the state. There’s a high probability that the turkey represented in my painting came from the original twenty-nine, according to James Burnham, a biologist from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.       This particular bird depicted in my painting was a member of a flock of five that visited my bird feeders’ spoils on Oct. 26, 2023. They are the largest birds to have visited, barring Canada Geese which riva

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches.      This is an oil painting of a Blue-headed Vireo. These birds do not display plumage dimorphism, meaning there is no coloration difference between males and females, i.e. they are monomorphic. Therefore, it’s a toss up whether this particular bird as seen on Oct. 1, 2021, was a male or female.       An interesting discovery by Canadian ornithologist Bridget Stutchbury of Toronto’s York University found that female Blue-headed Vireos venture out from their nesting territories to mate with other males after their young fledge, all the while their first mate attends to the remainder of the youngsters’ needs.       In the 1936 edition of Birds of America by T. Gilbert Pearson, the author writes the following about this bird: “It does not avoid mankind but dwells near him only when he lives in its favorite forest retreats. Like some other species it has proved so confiding at times as to allow a person to stroke its back as it sat on its beautiful pensile nes

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches.      This is an oil painting of a male Wood Duck. A couple of interesting tidbits about this bird is that their young are born precocial, which means they're able to survive almost immediately without the help of their parents. The opposite of precocial is altricial – baby robins and humans are examples of altricial species. Both need copious amounts of help to survive.      Also interesting is that Wood Ducks will eat acorns and other nuts as part of their diet. Maybe one day when my young oak trees grow up, these ducks will have more options for nourishment during their stopovers at my home besides insects and arthropods.

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches. This small oil painting of a Field Sparrow is from the Upper Sioux Agency State Park near Granite Falls, Minnesota. I visited this park in 2021, but it is now permanently closed as of February 16, 2024. In a first-ever for the state of Minnesota, ownership of a state park has been transferred to a Native American community, specifically the Dakota people of the Upper Sioux. Per the Minnesota DNR, “The Upper Sioux Community has a longstanding request to the State of Minnesota that the land at Upper Sioux Agency State Park (USASP) be returned to the Upper Sioux Community, given the extraordinary significance of this land to the tribal community. The land is the site of starvation and death of Dakota people during the summer of 1862, when the U.S. Government failed to provide food promised to the Dakota by treaty. Continuing to operate the land as a recreational use site is inconsistent with this profound history.”  This particular sparrow was perched on a bur

 Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches. This is an oil painting of an American Tree Sparrow. At my home in Duluth, winter has been extraordinarily warm which could be the reason a flock of 3-6 of these birds have stuck around all season. It is an observational "first" at my residence of 10 years. There are slight differences in range maps as to where this bird normally spends its winters. One map shows Duluth on the edge of where this bird is either common or uncommon in winter; the other map indicates this bird is common in my neck of the woods. When the weather warms and the snow melts in the coming weeks (there is limited snow now), these birds will fly to northern Alaska for their breeding season. References Cornell Lab of Ornithology. All About Birds. American Tree Sparrow. Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Retrieved Feb. 9, 2024 from https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/American_Tree_Sparrow/maps-range National Audubon Society. American Tree Sparrow. New York, New York

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches.      This is an oil painting of a Broad-winged Hawk as seen in my woods on May 12, 2022. During the fall, they migrate in such immense numbers their flocks have been called a “river of raptors” – flying through Veracruz, Mexico, and Panama to the Andean forests of Colombia and Bolivia. At my home, I have oftentimes gotten out of my chair upon hearing this hawk outside of my window, only to find a Blue Jay imitating it perfectly.      Their migration route spans approximately 4,000 miles and they travel around 70 miles per day. If this one came directly from the south of my home, it would have been in Burnett County, Wisconsin, the day prior. References Epic Journeys. (2021, Winter) Living Bird, 40 (1), 26. Kricher, J. C. (2020).  Peterson reference guide to bird behavior.  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches.      This is my oil painting of an immature Harris’s Sparrow. It’s a bird that will soon have a new name. That’s because the American Ornithological Society recently decided to rename every bird that was named after a person. Starting this year, the process of renaming approximately 152 North American birds will commence.       This bird was originally named by John James Audubon after his friend Edward Harris. Harris provided Audubon with financial assistance for the publication of his book, Birds of America . Strikingly, it was not Audubon or Harris who originally discovered this bird, it was Thomas Nuttall in 1834. He named the bird “Mourning Finch.” Although the word mourning appropriately describes this bird’s non-juvenile plumage (the face, cap, and neck of adult birds are black, perhaps representing the togas worn by humans as far back as the ancient Romans to mourn the loss of a loved one), this bird is not a finch.       Historical names of Harris’

 Showing "Superior Reflections" Oil on Textured Linen Panel - 12 x 24 inches Rock Pigeon  (Columba livia),  Lake Superior, Duluth harbor 29th Arts North International Juried Exhibition Jan. 13 - Feb. 24, 2024 Hopkins Center for the Arts 1111 Mainstreet Hopkins, MN 55343 952-548-6485 Free and open to the public.

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches. Like the Golden-winged Warbler (3 posts before this one), the Evening Grosbeak has also been given the unfortunate distinction as being a tipping point species. It is a bird that has lost half of its population in the past 50 years and is on track to lose another half if nothing changes in the next 50 years. "It's unknown what's causing the decline – disease, climate change, shifts in land use, some combination of those, or a different factor that scientists have yet to uncover."(1) This bird is an irruptive species whereby in certain years, it will appear in erratic numbers far south of its normal range. It also has a unique survival technique that is beneficial during harsh winters. Their esophagus contains an extension called an esophageal diverticula (a pouch) that's used to store whole seeds which are later regurgitated, broken up, and swallowed as food when needed. Sightings of the Evening Grosbeak can no longer be guaranteed in

 Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches. The Canada Warbler and the Muskrat (A Fable) by Becca Mulenburg      Deep inside a northern forest, a Canada Warbler sang. Some distance away, a muskrat heard the bird and became annoyed. With little appetite for the bird’s song, the muskrat stormed off to have a few words with the bird. It ran past the messy willow, the budding burdock, and the chokecherry in great haste, ignoring last year’s spoils scattered here and there on the ground. As the muskrat grew closer and closer to the bird, it began to sing less and less – until it stopped. This puzzled the muskrat, but soon the animal was at the base of the tree where only moments earlier the bird sang. Without being able to locate the hushed bird, the muskrat shouted towards the treetops, “Bird, I am tired. I have come a long way, and have left my home and my family. Wherever you are, please don’t sing anymore.” Overcome with peace and a great sense of satisfaction, the muskrat turned to go home. Suddenly

Three miniature oil paintings on exhibit. 90th Annual Exhibition of Fine Art in Miniature The Miniature Painters, Sculptors & Gravers Society of Washington, D.C. (MPSGS) The Mansion at Strathmore 10701 Rockville Pike North Bethesda, MD 20852   Nov. 18, 2023 thru Jan. 13, 2024

 Oil on Panel, 4 x 4 inches.      The Golden-winged Warbler is a very special bird to the state of Minnesota, and that’s because Minnesota supports the highest breeding population (about half) of this bird compared to any other state or province.       In the summer, the greatest concentration of this warbler exists west of Duluth and Minneapolis. When I saw this bird on May 17th in Minnesota, that date coincided with the males’ average first arrival to northern Wisconsin in the springtime. My latitudinal location wasn’t far off from northern Wisconsin and it was my first time seeing this bird.       However, before I saw it, I heard its call. I’m not proud to write that I dismissed its call as belonging to that of the Clay-colored Sparrow. It was buzzy, and with little thought I carelessly misidentified it as the sparrow, one that I’d seen and heard many times before. But something didn’t feel right. I was hearing more than one, perhaps a handful, and all very close; so I kept trying

  Saturday, Nov. 11, 2024 - Sunday, Nov. 12, 2024. Showing a selection of miniature oil paintings, prints, note cards, totes and more. Duluth Entertainment Convention Center (DECC) 350 Harbor Drive Duluth, MN 55802

  Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches.      This warbler, a Northern Parula, was spotted during migration at my home on September 5th, 2023. It was a yard-list first, and noticed by its song – the one with distinct pauses in between bouts of a rising buzzy trill as described by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Examination of my photographs shows it was a male.       In my neck of the woods (northern Minnesota), Parulas nest in Old Man’s Beard, a type of lichen that contains usnic acid, a medicinal component of the plant. Historically, when used as a compress by the Native Americans, Old Man’s Beard prevented infection and gangrene. It is apparently edible and contains high levels of vitamin C. Perhaps these two traits of this plant are valuable to remember if I’m ever stranded in the wild.       In the south, Northern Parulas nest in Spanish moss. When I lived in San Antonio for a while, Spanish moss took getting used to. I found it unsightly at first, then grew accustomed to it. That which is

Oil on Linen Panel - 12 x 24 inches. My painting of a Rock Pigeon won the Award of Excellence at last night's opening reception at the Edge Center's 17th Annual Juried Exhibition in Bigfork, Minnesota. The show had a wonderful turnout, it was nice to meet new people, and congratulations to the Edge for putting on a fine show. I hope you're able to visit the Edge to see the exhibition. Art on the Edge, 17th Annual Juried Exhibition Aug. 3 - Sept. 2, 2023 The Edge Gallery 101 2nd Ave. Bigfork, MN 56628

  May 22 - June 18, 2023 Duluth Art Institute Members Show The Depot Great Hall (street level) 506 W Michigan St Duluth, MN 55802

  Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches. Happy Spring, everyone!

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches. Every year, my fruit trees provide food for Ruffed Grouse, a bird that is most abundant in aspen forests, but which seem to like my neck of the woods just fine. Birch, conifers, cedars, and alder thickets make up a good portion of the forest nearby, while crabapple trees dot the landscape.  I noticed Ruffed Grouse actively feeding in late January through mid-February, picking my front yard’s fruit trees clean. I also watched them feed on the catkins of a river birch on February 5th. In mid-February, six Ruffed Grouse fed from a fruit tree, the most I’ve ever observed in one location. I hope they’ve been able to find other sources of food since then, considering this year’s high snow totals. My neighborhood won’t see bare ground for weeks.  When forest logs are sufficiently free of snow, drumming should commence. On April 5th and May 5th, upcoming full moon dates, my chances of hearing the males drumming might increase, although it’s highly unlikely the wood