ANCIENT GATE IN AACHEN, GERMANY

Ancient Gate, Aachen, 28 x 22 inch oil and colored pencil on paper by George C. Clark   AVAILABLE

Some years ago my wife and I took advantage of a real bargain airfare and flew to Brussels, Belgium in January.  We rented a car and did a leisurely circuit visiting Bruges and Ghent in Belgium, and Zierikzee, Holland, the former home town of a friend in Chicago, before crossing into northwestern Germany, where I had arranged an invitation for us to stay overnight and have a private tour of Ramstein Air Force Base.  I could do that because I was an active contributing artist in the US Air Force Art Program in those days.  We stayed in Wertheim and Frankfort too, before heading back to Brussels by way of Aachen.  We enjoyed the trip a lot in spite of the short days and cold weather (not as cold as Chicago), but I didn't get any on-site painting done.  I did do several paintings back home from the copy photos I took in Europe, and this is one of them.  This old tower is about all that's left of the city walls that protected Aachen when it was the capital of the Holy Roman Empire founded by Charlemagne.  I researched this painting on a morning when an overnight snow had left the park grass covered and the street slushy.

I recently reworked parts of this painting and reformatted it to a smaller size.  I used to show all my works on paper with mattes inside a larger frame, and I still do that with drawings or watercolors that have bare white paper showing.  However, I now like to show art where almost the whole surface is covered with paint (like this one) without a matte and framed like a canvas or painting on a hard panel would be, although it still needs to be covered with plexiglas. 

For years I've been a member of the informal Artists Breakfast Group that meets Wednesday mornings at the S&G Restaurant on Lincoln Avenue at its intersection with Wellington and Southport Avenues in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood.  We are invited to show our art on a restaurant wall in a rotating exhibition.  For the next 2 or 3 months you can see Ancient Gate, Aachen there.  The food is good and the portions are generous.  Look for the "Breakfast Specials" menu.   

DUNES ON THE FLORIDA COAST

Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, 8 x 15.5 inch ink drawing by George C. Clark   AVAILABLE

I made this drawing last month at the Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve on the Atlantic coast north of St. Augustine, Florida, a lovely stretch of beach, dunes, and coastal wetlands.  Swimmers, surfers and fishermen can access the beach, but only via wooden boardwalks that protect the fragile plants that anchor the dunes in place.  I drew from an overlook on one of those boardwalks across a 2-page spread in my sketchbook, which I later cut out of its binding and flattened for framing.  I will probably do a full color version of this image with watercolors.

George C. Clark drawing beach dunes in Florida.  Photo by Pat Clark.