Saturday, October 23, 2010

Bradley Fox


UPDATE: BRADLEY'S MEMORIAL SERVICE
  • Date/time: Friday, Oct. 29 from 5pm - 10pm (Bradley time!)
  • Bring: Pot luck and BYOB.
  • Location: at the Vermont Studio Center's Gallery 2 on Pearl Street in Johnson.
  • Bradleys work will be on display. Bring your own photos and stories and memories, too.


Dear friends,

Bradley Fox, founding member of East Johnson Plein Air Club, and our very good friend, died unexpectedly last weekend (some time during weekend of October 16/17 as far as I know.) There will be a memorial service on Friday, October 29th. I am unsure of location and time, and I will make sure to post this information as soon as I find out.

I met with Dorhn and Deb this morning so we could talk about our loss, and also to discuss the future of the Plein Air Club. We wanted to share that each of us had had long conversations with Bradley the week before his death, where we had been throwing around ideas for making plans for the upcoming winter:
1. Bradley and I talked about moving the Plein Air Club to large, public indoor spaces for the winter (so not exactly plein air... but ..). We talked about taking trips to airports, malls, the large spaces of colleges, like Johnson State college's library and swimming pool, etc. We also discussed our neglecting this blog, and how we really needed to update!
2. Bradley and Dorhn had also discussed starting up a Salon type of meeting once a month or every other month, where we can gather, have group critique and snacks and good company. This would take place at people's homes.
3. Bradley and Deb had talked about taking Plein Air Club trip to Montreal for inspiration!

-----

We are interested in all these things. Bradley really was the energy behind the Plein Air Club. I hope we can keep the energy going.

I hope to hear from you or see you at Bradley's service on Friday.

Sincerely,
Marcie Vallette


Tuesday, June 8, 2010

June 1-6





The rain has been tricky to get around and again it cancelled our outing to the Stowe Bike path. While this year hasn't been as rainy as last year, it has presented challenges to meeting as a group. I did get out to Stowe and Smuggler's Notch between the bad weather. I have been working in a bigger sketchbook to try working in a looser more aggressive style. I find my decisions about color, value, editing form, are forced to rely more on intuition than analytical thinking when I work larger. here are some early attempts. We will see how this progresses over the summer.
Bradley

Saturday, May 29, 2010




Another couple of weeks of painting have come and gone. We met in Montgomery on the 16th and it was a beautiful clear day. Unfortunately we had to deal with strong cold winds.So strong in fact that the painting I had worked on for 3 hours got blown over, paint box and all as I was standing back to look at it. Therefore the sketchbook image for today.
Next was Jeffersonville Village painting on the 23rd. We fared better with the weather as it was sunny and hot. Finding shade to work in was the only problem of the day.
The small painting in this post is the apple tree in front of the Varnum Library. I also did other color sketches, stock-piling images for studio work.
The last sketch is from the ol'-fav spot on the Lamoille near the Long Trail footbridge.
Brian and I spent an afternoon sketching and painting there, as well as some work in Montpelier on Monday. The EJ Plein Air club can inspire some great extracurricular drawing!
Hope to see many more of You out there with us in the coming months 'cuz in Vermont snow is always on the way!!
Bradley

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Oh, The Rains and Snow












We had a rough time with the weather getting out the last couple of weeks. We did however, have some great painting time at Warren and Tara's farm here in Johnson. We made repeated outings to the farm and these are a couple small paintings I did there. Although the photo doesn't show it, each time we visited the poplars gave us increasingly brilliant yellows. We are headed into the villages in the upcoming weeks so look for more posts soon.
Bradley

Sunday, April 18, 2010

April Rains


April 4th brought cold temps and some wind but I managed to get a couple of small paintings done. Dohrn and I were the brave ones that made it out to paint amid the noisy frogs in the pond.
April 11 and 18th bought rain, snow, rain again....and then some more rain. Due to the unpredictability of the weather we will be
trying again on April 25th (Sun,9am) to visit the Warren farm here in Johnson. Keeping it closer to home until we can have some consistent sunshine, Irasburg will be rescheduled for a later date.
Hope to see some more company for next week.
Bradley

Sunday, March 28, 2010

March 28, 2010 at Hogback Road

brrrrrrrrrrr.



Hello all. We canceled this morning's outing, and rescheduled for this afternoon. We decided to go to the Long Trail river crossing at Hogback Road. Easy to get to, close by and lovely! It was still cold, but the sun was threatening to shine and we we went at 1:45. We figured we could handle it.

We both worked small and quickly because our fingers were getting increasingly cold. I splashed around with an ink stick and my favorite (expensive) brush, while Bradley used colored pencil. Finally after about 45 minutes we had had enough and our fingers were freezing. But it was great to get out anyway! I look forward to next week at Dohrn's.

-- Marcie