This is the second post of my "sketchbook" from my visit to the Art Institute of Chicago.

French painter Jean-Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940) has always been recommended to me as a colorist, but in this painting "Vuillard's Room at the Château des Clayes", I really saw it for the first time.

The warmth of the shadows, juxtaposed with the harsh cold gray of the raking sunlight...

I visited the Art Institute of Chicago on Thursday during my vacation for their Target-sponsored Free Thursday evenings. What a wonderful a gift to the people of Chicago city to offer free admission from 5-8pm once a week - there was a line to enter at 5:00 and the museum was packed with people all evening.

The new wing is huge, with the capacity to give their spectacular collection of 20th century art the viewing space it deserves...

Summer is a time for water and blue sky -- I have had some opportunities to make some small drawings, but also to hang an exhibit of my church interiors at a local venue.

Prints, paintings, and drawings of my series of architectural interiors will be on exhibit during the month of July...

My latest church interior painting is to benefit the local parish of St. Thomas Aquinas in Jamaica Plain, several miles from where I live. What you see is the skeletal “work in progress” – still much to be done!

St. Thomas Aquinas parish was the first parish in Jamaica Plain, and was the mother parish for several other parishes in the Boston neighborhood. The beautiful neo-Gothic building dates to the 1890’s. The project evolved from a some work I did in 2004 while attending my local parish...