My friend Barry Raybould, one of the two guys I went with to Yunnan Province, China, last March, (the other friend is Timothy Tien) has been talking about block studies ever since I met him.   This was my summer project--block study/still lifes in outdoor natural light.  I painted this one about a third of the way through my goal of 50 studies.  When I got halfway through, I forgot why I was doing it, which forced me to do things I'd never done, like go read the Henry Henshe facebook page to try to understand what the purpose of painting colored blocks in natural light was all about in the first place.  I realized I didn't know the first thing about what the block studies were for and so then it got interesting again.

Meanwhile, I entered a couple of plein air competitions in the Northwest and won awards in each one.  This painting won an award from juror Xiaogang Zhu at the Whidbey Island US Plein Air Open September 12, 2009.  Maybe the block studies are paying off.  I am beginning to see everything as a big block study.