“ANTIQUE MARBLE STUDY” 16 x 60 inch watercolor painting

Catching the reflections in glass is perhaps one of the more difficult things that I do in watercolor painting.  This painting uses the transparent watercolor technique where the lighter tones are influenced by the white paper showing through underneath.  That means that the paper also forms the “whites” in the painting.  There are a few opaques, but for the most part the painting is executed using traditional transparent watercolor technique.

These are all marbles from my own collection.  The larger marbles are German hand made marbles from the late 1800’s and the beginning of the 20th century.  These victorian marbles were hand blown by master craftsmen in a time when the qualities of superior craftsmanship far outweighed the benefits of mass production.   Names like onion skins, swirls and St. Josephs describe some of the various types shown.  The big onion skin marble is better than two inches in diameter.  The clear glass marbles with either numbers or animals in the centers are called sulphide marbles.   The smallest marbles in the foreground are American machine made marbles from the 1930’s or later.

I grew up in the 1950’s when boys and girls still played with marbles.  There was a time when my bag of marbles accompanied me everywhere that I went.  The first toys of memory were my mother’s marbles that she played with as a child.  Today, such simple pieces of glass can be worth a pretty penny and are highly collectable by those in the know.  Not many survived in mint condition.  And a good deal of those that did, were lost along the way and yet to be found.

Some interesting sites to visit about marbles:  www.akronmarbles.com Akron Marbles is an interesting site describing the history of marble making in the United States.  Moon Marbles is a modern day marble maker located outside Kansas City, in Bonner Springs, Kansas.  It is worth a visit in person on demonstration day when one can still see marbles made by hand.

Welcome to Larry’s World. Let’s not pretend that there is some big fascination about artists’ studios.  If you have seen one, you have seen them all.  However, the topic does come up in conversation from time to time.  I have never understood exactly why it is, but people always want to know if I have a studio.  I guess that it is a way of making conversation.   I am often asked if people can ever stop in for a visit should they be traveling through town.  No problem.  I am open by appointment.

My studio is my office.  It is the place where I go to work every day just like anyone else who is employed and brings home a paycheck.  My place of employment just happens to be in the basement of my own home and it is a lot more casual than the usual eight-to-five.  That does not mean, that doing what I do for a living, requires any less attention to detail; or that the workload is any lighter.  It is a job like any other.  Perhaps working as an artist is perceived as being a bit different from the norm.  I have no problem with perceptions.  I cannot say that I ever feel like an animal in the zoo, but working in my field seems to stir more than a little interest from an inquisitive few.  I welcome their interest and embrace the concept that making art for a living is a little unusual.  And because this is not some secret fraternity, limited only to social fruit heads  and creative wingnuts, I don’t mind sharing the inside scoop.  Follow me downstairs, inside the studio, for a virtual tour.  I promise that it is worth the price of admission.  It is free.

My 60 inch mat cutter where I cut my own mats.

My first job out of high school was working for Attic Arts, a small manufacturing firm in Oklahoma City, that sold a wholesale line of high end framed designer art to the furniture industry.  It was there that I learned how to construct picture frames from milled wood and apply faux finishes to the completed frame.  I quickly learned the entire framing process and have always framed my own artwork ever since.  That job provided a weekly paycheck, but the knowledge that I learned early on about framing my own artwork has paid me many times over.

A long bank of framing tables, mounted on saw horses, line up against one wall.   These are 4 x 8 finished office partitions that were salvaged during a remodel.  The painting in the background is five feet wide.  I need big tables for what I do.  The tables provide ample space for laying out artwork where matting and glass is put into custom frames.

My studio is not a lot different from any that of any other working artist.  It is a working studio and it is not always kept as neat as a pin.  House cleaning is not first on my list, although it is not what I would call unclean.  Let’s call it comfortable.  Paint is spattered on the walls.  Drawings in progress are taped up with masking tape.  Bicycles hang from the ceiling.  Maybe it is simply this left brain right brain thing.  I find that some creative people tend to prioritize in different areas, while managing to overlook the clutter.  An engineer would never be able to work in the environment that I prefer for myself.  I find the collection of oddities surrounding my workspace to be quite stimulating.  One simply has to look past the vintage bicycles hung from the ceiling and mounted to the walls; beyond the disheveled shelves of antique toys and scattered memorabilia to see the bigger picture.  There is order in all this disarray.  All of the tools of the trade are assigned their places and different tasks are preformed in different sections of the studio.

Security

The downstairs is also home to “Kitty,” our shelter cat; queen of her own domain.  God only help any stray bug or varmint dumb enough to stumble through “airport security”  into her space.  For some odd reason she has claimed the studio turf as her own.  You can often find her nestled in front of the fireplace, or perched on a chair, seemingly unaware of anything else around her.  At night she is my guard kitty. She sits wide awake in front of the fireplace watching  for intruders as if she were guarding Fort Knox.  All the while, the dogs are both upstairs snoring away.

One cold winter’s night I heard a noise downstairs and got out of bed to see what was all the clatter.  Kitty had a stray cat cornered and hissing back at her.  The stray had somehow found its way into house. Upon seeing me, this disgruntled feline, found her way back outside as quickly as she had found her way in.   Kitty did not back up an inch.  Enough said.

Going to Work.

I must admit that it is nice to jump out of bed, and travel no farther when going to work, than a short journey down a flight of stairs.  That is a pretty short commute, and I never think about carrying an umbrella or stopping in a drive thru to get coffee along the way.  My work space consist of about eight hundred square feet of finished walkout basement. We have lived here the past eleven years.  The house was new when we bought it, and one of the main selling points was the fact that the back of the house faces north.  North light is the most even lighting for a painter, like myself.  Some people dream of a big kitchen with granite counter tops or a master bedroom  with a sunken tub.  My number one priority when going house hunting was focused around a potential art studio.

Antique Oak Drafting Table

My downstairs studio space consists of three large rooms, plus two ample storage spaces.  One of the storage rooms has a large dry mount machine.  This is a hot and cold machine that can flatten paintings in a vacuum or dry mount art to a rigid surface.  The painting room, would have been built as a guest bedroom.  It is a 12 x 12 room with added lighting and a big window.  My painting table is located in front of this large window facing north.  It is a large drafting table with a bit of history.  I bought it at auction maybe twenty-five years ago from another artist forced to leave it behind when he made a move.  The table had probably been used by geologists in the Marland Oil Company of the 1920’s and 30’s for mapping oil prospects.  My artist friend had acquired it when he had worked in the art department at Conoco Oil.  Those early oil days were the times when gushers blew in spraying black crude for miles.  There is much interesting history surrounding the oil pioneers of the state of Oklahoma.  My grandmother, lived in the town of Edmond, north of Oklahoma City.  She once told me a story about a gusher that blew in on the state capitol grounds spraying oil in the wind for miles.  It blackened her clean white wash drying on an outside line in the 1940’s.   After college I moved to Ponca City, Oklahoma.  The Marland Oil Company had been headquartered in  Ponca City.  E.W. Marland was a flamboyant oil man and wildcatter who later became the Governor of the state of Oklahoma.  Marland eventually fell on hard times and went broke.  The Marland Oil Company was sold to the Conoco Oil company.  Conoco kept the Marland company logo and headquartered for the next three decades in Ponca City before moving its corporate headquarters to Houston in the 1970’s.   I often wonder who has sat at this drafting table, and what stories it could tell.   The drafting table is six feet wide and constructed of well worn heavy oak.

There is also a downstairs bathroom and a shower which is seldom, if ever used.  I use the bathroom primarily for cleaning brushes and getting fresh water.  The large middle room is totally dedicated to framing.  It could have just as easily have been used for a large game room or family area.  We took out the carpeting and put down  porcelain tiled flooring, which is easy to keep clean.

Wall mounted glass cutter.

This piece of equipment will square and cut both plexiglas and glass, as well as mat board.  I generally frame my larger paintings using plastic sheeting.  Plex will not break and it is also substantially lighter weight.  I purchase large 48 X 96 inch sheets of plastic sheeting for this purpose and cut them to fit.

All the coziness of a fireplace in winter.

Toys and more toys.

Throughout the studio models from previous paintings are to be found on shelves and on the mantle of the fireplace.  I collect antique toys.  During the late 1990’s I was contracted on a retainer to a large stationery and greeting card company.   I helped design and illustrate a line of artwork licensed for a number of gift and stationery products.  It was pleasing to see my artwork in numerous retail stores throughout the country, but the work itself was grueling.  One day my wife, Sheryl, made an intelligent observation.  She told me that my creativity should not only be about the money.  What she was telling me was that I should consider creating artwork for myself, rather than working for art directors and corporate executives.  That comment put in motion a plan that finally met with fruition in 2000 with the birth of a collection of paintings using the toys I loved to collect.

The computer room.

Years ago I was traveling across New Mexico with my artist friend, Jerry Ellis.  This would have been the early 1980’s.   PC’s and word processors were replacing typewriters and becoming commonplace office fare.  My sister worked as an account executive for a large advertising agency and was a big fan of Apple computers.  The creative people in the Agency used Macs for all of their work.   I knew little about computers myself, but had listened to what she had to say.  I told Jerry that there might come a day when artists completed pieces of fine art on computers alone.  It was loose talk at the time, but not far off the mark.  Years later, my oldest son, Cullen, graduated with his MFA from Canbrook Academy of Art, outside of  Detroit in 2006.  His creative focus is centered around digital technology and applying it to making all kinds of art including film.  He is light years ahead of me in his thinking, but I have also learned to apply technology to much of my own creative process.  I can readily solve problems in composition by moving components around and seeing them on a computer screen before I ever pick up a brush or a pencil.  I also can design patterns and repeats, as well as commercial applications and illustrations using painting software like Corel Painter or Adobe Photoshop.

I have a separate room totally dedicated to office space where I do my graphic work on the computer, as well as all correspondence, and printing.   Much of my initial design work in done on computer.  The Macintosh in this room is an extension of my right arm.  Also located in that portion of the studio is a large Epson 9800 commercial printer.  I do all of my own printing for my signed and limited edition prints. None of the digital work is farmed out.  This not only insures quality; it also provides my customers the best pricing available.  This type of reproduction work is done one print at a time and every care is taken during the process to provide an archival print of museum standards.

I learned digital printing techniques from some of the best in the business.   During the 1990’s my wife and I owned a fine art poster publishing company that distributed prints wholesale to art dealers and frame shops worldwide.  We printed in runs of five and ten thousand on commercial offset printing presses.  Before engaging a large print run, we would generally make a single digital proof for checking color and overall quality.  This was done on an Iris printer.  An Iris was a highly technical digital printer that produced the highest quality printing known at the time.  The company doing my offset printing, told me that the Iris machine was a $100,000.00 investment.  Like any new technology, the prices soon came down.  The photographer who photographed all of my images purchased his own Iris machine for $36,000.00 in the late 90’s.  Artists and photographers began using the Iris in the early 90’s to produce museum quality printing.  The process was expensive, but it did not require large print runs either.  The main advantage of an Iris was that printing could be done one print at a time.   Because of the high expense of owning and operating an Iris, there were relatively few available.  Advances in printing technology has changed all of that.  Today, any artist willing to learn the necessary technology for color correction, can own and operate a quality commercial printer.  Owning a quality printer, alone, does not insure success.  It requires certain technological skills and a good eye for the correction process.  No matter the quality of the machine, the printer is no more capable of printing better quality than the digital information entered into the computer.  Thus, the statement, “trash in, trash out.” But technology does provide some powerful creative tools for the artists willing to learn how to use them.   There is little doubt in my own mind, had Rembrandt had similar artistic tools available in his day, he would have learned to use them well.

EPSON 9800 COLOR PRINTER

I can print images up to 96 inches long and 44 inches wide using current software.  I have a friend who uses similar printers to print wall coverings and architectural applications from original artwork.   These machines can print on canvas as well as they can on paper.

A HOME FOR MY COLLECTABLES.

1937 Hawthorne Zep

I am fascinated by vintage balloon tire bicycles.  This old Zeppelin bike hangs on the wall in my painting room.  The same bicycle was used as the model for my painting, King of Hearts, in 2001.

Wooden lures with glass eyes.

These bad boys have seen some action over the years.  I collect a few vintage fishing lures and keep them around for the occasional painting or two.

As long as I can remember the evening’s entertainment around the Stephenson household has centered on creating dinner.  There is something magical about creating an exciting meal that does not come out of a box.  Ideas can take flight while experimenting with unusual foods and different cuisines from far away continents.  It has not always been pretty; but I say nothing ventured, nothing gained.   That is how it always was for our three sons, while growing up in a household where the evening meal was the big ticket attraction for the end of day.  I hope that they never thought of themselves as Guinea pigs in some grand experiment.  Oh, yeah, we did our share of soccer outings during the weekends, and had plenty of evenings watching Bo play hockey.

Sheryl works as a marketing director for a large credit union.   There has never been enough of her to go around.   That did not stop us from spending hours each evening in the kitchen.  I have always made a business out of my art and I treat each day like a day at the office.   Our shared cooking time at the end of the day was our special way of rewarding ourselves for a long day at the salt mines.  Our interest in gourmet cooking helped shed some of the tensions carried home from the daily grind.  Cooking was never work.  It has always been just for fun at our household.

Because of this induced cooking environment, it is little wonder that Bo, our youngest of the three boys, chose to become a licensed chef.   He is more than halfway through a rather demanding culinary degree.   The school’s requirements are not for anyone without a strong work ethic and the ability to literally think outside of the box.  While going to school full time, he currently works two fulltime 40 hour-a-week jobs at two separate gourmet restaurants.  And he just cannot get enough of it.  That makes his mom and I sing with joy!  He seems to have found his passion and nothing is finer in life than doing what you were meant to do.  Go Bo!

A couple of years back I painted this painting of a grumpy chef presenting  rare sliced roast beef tableside.   The model for the painting came from a lead toy chef from the 1940’s manufactured by the Barclay Toy Company.  For anyone interested, I can print this in custom sizes using the giclee printing process of 1800 dots per square inch.  The printing quality is phenomenal.   We have one hanging in our own kitchen and it always brings a laugh.

GO ELVIS!

It was the 1950’s. Rock & Roll was in the air. The race to space had just begun, and Japanese toy robots were the latest thing on the shelves at the local dime store.  Today, those same tin robots sell for hundreds, even thousands of dollars.

This is a 30 x 50 inch watercolor that I am in the final stages of completing this week.  I have been playing with this idea for a couple of years, and I finally started working on the composition with a few drawings this last summer. The composition was completed last July, but I did not get around to painting on the image until late last month.  I photographed the painting this morning after a few weeks of long hours in the studio.

This is my own loose interpretation of Elvis in a space suit.  He is surrounded by a band of musical, gyrating robots.   The models for the painting began as actual toys (without Elvis).  The real toy astronaut was manufactured in the 1960’s by the Marx Toy Company.  I am not sure if I pulled it off, but I had fun playing with the idea.  I have attempted to do away with much of the formally stamped out tin of the real toy robots; wanting to give them a more animated feel.  I wanted them to still have the appearance of toys while being a bit surreal.

Some may question  why it is that I did not paint the toys in a more traditional fashion. Frankly, I do not have an answer.  There are no rules when it comes to painting.  My images are generally done in fun, and true to form; I had a blast doing this one.   Go Elvis!

ROAD TRIP 29 x 41 inch watercolor painting

Years ago I sold a painting to a toy collector named Ron Sturgeon in Fort Worth, Texas.   Ron was kind enough to invite me out to his home to see his vast collection of motorized vehicle toys.   I took a few photographs while I was there.  The lithographed tin toy that I used for this painting is a German-made toy from Ron’s collection.

Out west this summer, I got an idea for this painting as I traversed Independence Pass on highway 82 outside of Aspen, Colorado.  The pass, at times only one car lane wide, winds over a trail through the mountains high above the timberline.   Almost crawling at speeds under 25 miles per hour, travelers take in a skyline view where only mountain tundra grows and hillsides slide off the cliffs into the valley far below.   This road trip is not for the faint of heart, but the journey is well worth the taking.  I have done it often when I visit my son in Aspen.

My new painting is titled, “Road Trip.”   It is a watercolor on paper with an image size of 29 X 41 inches.  The cyclers are riding a European scooter, dressed in their alpine hats and holding the family dog.   This vacationing, 1950’s German couple is juxtaposed into the Rocky Mountains.   During my travels I often see groups of cyclers breathing in the mountain air, winding up and down similar mountain trails.  Using toys is my own fun way of painting the American landscape.  Imagine these travelers carefully navigating sharp switchbacks as they wheel up and down a 6.5% grade on either side of the mountain pass.

Independence Pass serves as the eastern gateway to the Roaring Fork Valley, traversing above 10,000 feet at times.  The top of the pass intersects the Continental Divide at 12,095 feet.  This unique mountain corridor is located almost entirely on publicly accessible federal lands within the White River and Pike-San Isabel National Forests.  It is the second highest paved roadway in Colorado, linking Aspen and Leadville.  Situated at 10,152 feet, Leadville is the highest incorporated city in the United States.  In the late 1800’s Leadville was the second most populated city in Colorado, after Denver.  The former silver camp has shrunk to a population of less than 3000.  Today, it is nicknamed “The Two Mile High City.”

Whenever Leadville comes to mind, I think of Earl Walker.  Earl is an extremely talented contemporary furniture maker and artisan, living in Leadville.  I first met Earl at the Ann Arbor Art Fair several years back.  We showed next to one another for four days.  At the end of the show, I traded Earl a nice painting for a wonderful birds eye maple credenza.   That one-of-a-kind credenza has occupied a special place in our family home since that day.  Visit Walker Woodworks at WWW.WALKERWOODWORKS.COM.

“Don’t feed the animals.”  I remember those words from when I was a kid traveling through Yellowstone National Park as throngs of bears lined the road begging for treats from passersby.  This is my newest painting entitled, “Watch Out For Wildlife.”   Although the bears have all but disappeared from the roadsides of Yellowstone plenty of wildlife can still be viewed when traveling through Teton and Yellowstone parks.  Keep a sharp eye and no telling what you might see.