John Sullivan

Crayons, Pencils, Pens and Paint—Life Old Town, Alexandria, Virginia

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Cadillac Mountain Granite View. In early September 2012 I visited Maine for the first time, starting in Bar Harbor (“Bah Hahbah”). I spent a day in Acadia National Park, and hiked up the granite rocks of Cadillac Mountain. I love geology, and I splashed water on rocks to light up their colors. And the view down the granite slope to the Ocean, I’ll never forget it.

When I got back to Washington, DC, I broke out my watercolor paints for the first time in years and painted this scene as if a recent rain allowed the drying stones to share their colors.

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Sunrise at Thorofare Mountain Overlook. In September 2010 I drove Skyline Drive through the Shenandoah Mountains in Virginia and stayed overnight at Big Meadow Lodge on Skyline Drive. The experience was very moving, but I was particularly moved by the sculpted tree at Thorofare Mountain Overlook. So, I got up at about 5:00 am the next morning to experience the sunrise at Thorofare Mountain Overlook. I’ll never forget the peace, colors, and awakening sounds, including some rustling noises in the shrubs on the side of the mountain that were coming toward me as I watched the sunrise. I thought it was a bear. And just as I was getting in my car two hikers burst out of the bushes.

When I visited Cleveland for Christmas in 2010, I began painting my Thorofare Mountain Overlook morning experience in my parents’ basement. I finished it in the spring of 2011. (20” x 24,” oil on canvas)

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The Path to Nowhere. In the summer of 2009, I travelled to Missoula, Montana for a deposition. The deposition took place near the University of Montana, and at the foot of Mount Jumbo. In the evening I decided to go for a hike on Mount Jumbo. After about 2 hours of zig-zag hiking on the Jumbo South Face Trail, I realized I was not going to make it to the top. But the path at this height curved around toward the northwest and the view fascinated me. It became the path to nowhere, and the views and shapes of the hills, slopes, town, and distant mountains just stopped me.

And so, a few months later, I painted The Path to Nowhere in my parents’ basement when I was visiting for the Christmas holiday in 2009 just before a big trial. While I was painting my parents often came down with a cup of coffee, always on a saucer, to chat about life in D.C., my daughter’s life at Denison, and my younger daughter’s first semester at Ohio University. (20” x 24,” oil on canvas)

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Soft morning snow on the Green, in downtown Hudson, Ohio. When I woke up early that Saturday morning In December 2003 I saw light fluffy snow floating through and resting on the tree branches outside my window. I quickly grabbed my camera, and dashed out the door in my boots, coat, gloves and hat. Soft powdery steps, soft sounds. Just silence, as the snow painted lines and shapes everywhere.

After moving to Washington, D.C., I painted the snowy Green in 2010 and 2011 in my parents’ basement in Solon, Ohio. I could not use oil paint in my my apartment after moving, so I painted during my visits to Cleveland. I used water based oil paints for the first time while painting the snowy Green. They dry a little more quickly than regular oil paint, but the cleanup, without solvent, is so nice! And to my eye, they look just as good as regular oil paint. I have even used them to touch up some of my old oil paintings. (14” x 18,” oil on canvas)

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My daughters and nieces at Nags Head in 2002. I had so much fun painting the girls at the beach in their last years of girlhood. And this was my first watercolor painting on artist’s grade watercolor paper, 300 lb. Arches cold pressed paper. I bought it from Cheap Joe’s, one of my favorite places to shop online. www.cheapjoes.com.

I painted this piece as a gift for my mother-in-law in 2003. I enjoy looking back at my paintings during the painting process. The bottom photo on the left is the framed version that is hanging in her home. I painted this piece at the kitchen table in my home, and every time I painted my younger daughter would sit down at the table with me and paint acrylic and watercolor paintings. As I packed up my paints and brushes when I was done, my daughter asked, “Aren’t we going to paint today, Daddy?” And to this day, I still regret saying, “I’m so sorry, Bub, I’m done, but you can keep on painting.” I have posted one of the acrylic pieces she painted with me, which depicts a vase of Boltonia Snowbank flowers I cut from our garden.

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Back to the 1970s and my sweet dog, Casey. As I said in a poem I wrote in third grade, “we have a miniature schnauzer, he really is a rouser, he loves to play and run away and sleep on daddy’s trousers.” During thunderstorms, Casey would crawl headfirst under the couch, but his tail and back end and legs would stick out from under the front of the couch and shiver until the storm was over.

I painted Casey in 1979 with a technique I learned while interning at Artist Studios, Inc. in Downtown Cleveland during my sophomore year in college. I applied washes of watercolor, let them dry, and drew into the washes with pencil. It was my first watercolor painting that I ever liked. (9” x 12”, watercolor on student grade paper).

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Painting with flowers. Gardening for me is like painting with perennials, herbs, roses, bulbs, shrubs, and flowering trees. And like an oil painting, if something doesn’t work, paint over it! I love Old Garden Roses, even though many only bloom one per year in late spring. My favorite is Felicite Parmentier, an Alba Rose that was introduced before 1836. Her blooms remind me of a wet on wet Rose Madder watercolor wash. She enjoys light rain, as you can see, and has a scent that will draw you out in the rain for a sniff. I have heard she has a myrrh fragrance, but I have never smelled myrrh.

And when I think of Old Roses, I think of David Austin and his efforts since the late 1950s to cross Old Roses with repeat blooming modern roses to create beautiful, hardy, fragrant repeat-blooming Old Roses. His creations are known as English Roses and they have been part my gardens for decades. Thank you so much for your efforts, Mr. Austin. http://www.davidaustinroses.com

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“The Bub” in her favorite suit at Lake Michigan. She was quite a rumbler and tumbler as a toddler and earned the nickname “Bubba,” which was later shortened to “The Bub.” She became quite the grilled cheese connoisseur as she grew up and kept a grilled cheese rating of all the local restaurants we visited. When painting The Bub in about 1998 I masked her figure and painted the sky, grass field and beach with a hake brush based on Ron Ranson’s teachings. (11” x 14” watercolor).

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My Girls with Sweet Libby-Lu. This was my first watercolor painting after reading Ron Ranson’s amazing book, Big Brush Watercolor. Watercolor had always frustrated me. The colors dried light, ran where I didn’t want them to go, etc. I learned from Mr. Ranson about painting light to dark, which for me was the opposite of oil painting. I learned how to be patient with multiple washes, saving unpainted paper for white, and painting loosely with big brushes. And yes, I bought a hake brush. Thank you so much for the lessons Mr. Ranson. I painted this at our kitchen table in the late 1990s. (Watercolor, 8” x 10”)

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Friday Night Football, featuring the Hudson Explorers and their 330 member Swing Marching Band. We lived down the street from this stadium and I could feel the band warming up while eating my dinner. Their halftime show shook the grandstand and attracted huge crowds. And, their 17 to 20 tuba players made for quite a subwoofer!. The sunsets behind the grandstand were, well … I painted this in my basement in Hudson, Ohio in the mid 1990s. (Oil on canvas, 11” x 14”)

Oh, and if you look carefully at the path into the stadium you can see me pulling my girls to the game in their red wagon.

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In the garden with her bear. My daughter, who was almost 2 at the time of this painting in 1991, loved to explore the garden until her feet got wet. I used to pick grape hyacinth flowers because she loved to sniff them and carry them around with her Gear Bear, which we all called Gaba. (2’ x 3’ oil on canvas)

This was my first garden and it all began on the day I noticed some dandelions growing in the garden next to my front door. I got down on my knees with a trowel and dug it out. Then I saw another dandelion, and I crawled over and dug it out. Then I dug out another and another and another … About two hours later, my front garden had no weeds and I had a sunburned neck.

But the funny thing was, I felt great. Real world heartburn was gone for the first time in months. I hadn’t thought about work in hours, just dandelion roots, earthworms and soil. On that day, I became a gardener who knew nothing about gardening. I began reading books, listening to gardening shows, reading Horticulture Magazine, and painting with plants.

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The Flats. This was my first painting while living in the so-called real world. After graduating from the Vanderbilt Law School In 1984, I went to work for a law firm in Cleveland. I was stunned the first time I saw this view of the steel mills and the Cuyahoga River from the 33rd floor of our building. I studied and photographed this scene in different weather, seasons, and times of day. I painted it on an easel in my parents basement in 1986 and 1987. The Cuyahoga River, by the way, is the river that caught fire in 1969, which helped to spark the environmental movement in the United States. The River is beautiful today! (2’ x 3’ oil on canvas)

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Walking to the bus stop with Aunt Rose. I painted this my senior year at Denison in the spring of 1981. It is based on a memory of the morning in second grade when my mom received a phone call that my sweet Aunt Rose had died. I remember picking a sweatshirt pocket full of blueberries from her garden and I was worried I was going to get in trouble. But Aunt Rose washed them and served us bowls of blueberries and sweet cream. I was crying inside my hood as I walked in the rain on the day Aunt Rose passed. But her love and memory live with me—the blue in the clouds and blueberries. (3’ x 4’, oil on canvas).

Oh, and it took me about 30 years to realize I painted the stop sign on the wrong side of the street!

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I painted my college friend, nicknamed Polar Bear, in 1981 based on my memory of the last time I saw him—at a Saturday afternoon football game. His parents took him home the next day because he had suffered an emotional breakdown. He seemed lost at the game, almost like a statue, which is why I left the field empty. I realize that the jaw bone on on Polar Bear extends behind is ear, but it reflects that I didn’t have a model or an I-Phone for a quick reference photo. (3’ x 4’ oil on canvas).

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My first oil painting! I learned in the process that I loved the smell and the juicy look of fresh oil paint on canvas. I painted this during the fall semester of my sophomore year at Denison University in 1978. Much of Denison’s campus sits on top of a hill and provides a beautiful view of distant hills, fields, and woods. I learned from these views that although my brain knew the distant hills and fields were green, my eye saw them as various shades of gray. So I experimented with complimentary colors in painting the distant hills in this painting of the Ring of Kerry. Our family vacation to Ireland the previous summer inspired this painting. I based it partly on a photo I took of the Ring of Kerry but also on memories of stone-walled fields I saw throughout Ireland. (3’ x 3’ oil on canvas)

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During my senior year in High School, 1977, I sketched with a Bic pen some of my classmates in their after school social hour in the main hall. Love the bell bottoms!

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I painted this still life in Mr. Florentine’s art class in 1977, my senior year at Brush High School. I so enjoyed painting the apple, that I went home and found a picture of an orange to paint in one of my Mom’s magazines. My friend, Jim Williams, and I studied that orange with a magnifying glass to figure our how to make the orange look juicy. I also studied magazine photos to figure out how to paint a drop of water on the orange. I painted this with tempra paint on a masonite board and glazed it with some sort of Liquitex coating. (18” x 24”)