For the past four years Ive been invited up to Door County in Northern Wisconcin to paint, and each time I have returned to Chicago exhausted and exhilarated. This is the most adrenaline-filled, frenetic and challenging week of my professional calendar each year. A week of painting against the clock, in spite of the elements, in front of fellow artists, collectors, gallerists and the swarming throngs of vacationers in this beautiful peninsula. Up before dawn each day and on the go till after dusk each evening to produce an exhibition by Friday night. It s the closest I will ever come to an olympic event.

So I arrived at 10 this evening in the beautiful lake home of Chicago architect (and my friend) Jim Nagle.

Usually he is here too (a keen watercolorist himself) along with his partner and my longtime studio mate, Mary Ann Alexander, but for one reason and another i have the place to myself this year, which is a bit weird. And lonely.

On my way up I stopped in to the Public Museum in Kenosha to jury the local school district High School student art competition with my colleague from the American Academy, Tom Herzberg. High school art is a lot better than it was in my day, or at least in my day in my high school. And on our way to the art competition we took in the Transparent Watercolor Society of America (TWSA) annual juried exhibition which was very good to see. Saw a lot of work that one would expect to see in such a watercolor show, and certainly a great deal of technically excellent works, but there were four or five that would have looked very handsome in the Barber Kennedy home.

Reservation Wall, Dean Mitchell

For a few years Ive heard the name Dean Mitchell, as in "You remind me of…." or "You probably know…" or "I bet you like…"
Well today I saw my first Dean Mitchell and I can say that I like and I remind me of Dean Mitchell.

So its time for bed and tomorrow the games begin.