Angry Cats & The Jerrys Box

I'm home.
The Amtrak ride was a little over 8 hours, longer than the ride up.

It's because I took a different Amtrak line.  I took the Maple Leaf line up, which goes to Toronto.

Coming back I was on the train that starts at Chicago and physically splits into 2 trains at Albany.

The half of the train going to Boston left first, and the NYC people had a long layover in Albany.

But although it was long, it was probably the most comfortable Amtrak journey I have ever had!

After Syracuse- an hour into the trip- I had 2 seats to myself for the entire ride!

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Last Thursday, one day before I left for Rochester, I did a refill order of panels and a few other things from Jerrys.

Free shipping, 5-7 business days.

Perfect.

It arrived Saturday late morning.....!!!!!! What??

So, my box was sitting for a couple of days...I was mildly concerned about it, but it was fine.
Thankfully!

All of this is plein air refills.

I ordered 30 panels and I have 9 remaining.

That's kind of funny because that sunflower plein air was #39 for 2026!

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My cats are upset with me.

I dreamed about them on my second night away.

I was gone one more night than probably I should have been, plus four full days, but I need to live and not be completely cat-trapped.

This trip was my fifth trip away this summer.

Five trips since June... that's a lot! 

It has all been good, but I need a break from multi-night trips for a little while.

I think my head needs a break too.

So, now that Labor Day is over, the summer is informally over.

I have to work Fridays now!

My mindset will switch to Fall, and I'm not really ready yet.

Summer went by so fast.

It has been a wonderful summer and a disappointing summer all at the same time.

I guess that's life sometimes.

Painting Sunflowers & Dave's Boat on Lake Keuka

Teresa has a friend who has a cottage from the 1800s on Lake Keuka, which is one of the finger lakes.
It's about an hour and a half south of Rochester, in Amish country.

On the way down we stopped at a local general store, where I found an amazing present for Daya- more on that in another post.

Teresa's friend Carol has land and a stunning garden.

She's a landscape architect and knows everything about plants, it's amazing!

Well except stapeliads, so I told her all about them and showed her pictures!

I painted the sunflowers in her garden.

Here's a fun thing: a couple of days ago I saw a plein air p[ainting of sunflowers that I really liked and I thought to myself, I'd like to paint sunflowers en plein air... and here they were!

I have not painted sunflowers on-location before and mostly I didn't know what I was doing but it came out pretty ok, I think.

I definitely need more practice!

8x10 oil

Some pictures from Carol's garden:

Then we went on Dave's motorboat for a ride on the lake.

The water was turquoise, it really was!!!

I could paint up here every day for a year and still not paint everything I see that should be painted!

Lake Ontario Plein Air

Teresa dropped me off for a bit at Hamlin State Park and I painted Lake Ontario from a cliff.
The colors in the water were really pretty.... it was a nice view to paint and I didn't get attacked by bugs, which was nice.

8x10 oil

Jimmy & Jackson & Upstate

My friend Teresa, who I have been friends with for almost 25 years, lost 2 very special cats.

It's the kind of situation that needed a gift painting.

Of course I left it to the last minute...and last-minute for oil painters means factoring in lots of drying time.

This is about a 10-hour painting, and I had to do it all at once over about 48 hours because it's a wet-in-wet painting, no dry layers. I needed to do it while the paint was still open.
Both cats showed up very strongly at the beginning of the painting, they were very happy about it, then about halfway through they disappeared.

Even though this is a rainbow bridge painting, the cats and Dru (thanks Dru!) felt no rainbow things were needed.

9x12 oil

Pebbles wanted to pose with the painting:

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Today I took Amtrak up to Rochester to see Teresa for the weekend.

It's a long train ride- about 7 hours- but since I brought oil paint, I didn't want to deal with the hassle of airline security.

The train trip is a lot longer but was cheaper than flying and is generally no-stress.

Teresa loved the painting.

She lives in a gorgeous area, right on Lake Ontario, and she isn't too far from the finger lakes region.

In the evening we took a short walk around one of the parks, I forgot which one it was but it's nice wetlands.  I do get into nature a lot but what I almost never get is large open space-- which I miss sometimes and I really enjoyed upstate.

Minnie

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I stayed in Teresa's basement.

I LOVE Teresa's basement!

It's my kind of space- a little weird and very comfortable.

It has 4 main large rooms plus I'm not sure how many secret rooms!

The secret rooms are awesome!

Also there is a disused claw foot bathtub with cellos in it, a pencil sharpener in the bathroom, a whole entire extra kitchen, a piano, and a very old computer that Teresa holds on to because it has a large collection of Steely Dan on it.

It is good to see my friend and have a bit of an environment change.

4 Camping Paintings!

Our annual volunteer appreciation trip was this weekend!

I was one of the organizers, so I went up on Thursday and came back today, Sunday.

It was a good stretch of time to be away. I had a great time but was ready to be home, and I missed my cats.

My hammock was amazingly comfy!

All paintings are 6x8 oil, and my brushes are dead!

My Belly River box also needs some maintenance.

It is such a good old friend, going strong now for 16 1/2 years!

A few assorted pics...

My hammock is so incredibly comfortable!

I dont know why hammock interior pics always come out red. 
My hammock is green, I guess the camera can't handle the bouncing light or something.