For the holiday season, I’ve list all the paintings I have available under $200.
Shipping in the US is free
For the holiday season, I’ve list all the paintings I have available under $200.
Shipping in the US is free
Last winter Ariel and I were in need of a pandemic activity so we decided to watch all 100 movies on the 2007 list of AFI’s 100 Greatest Movies of All Time. The AFI list emphasizes not just great movies, but popular films that helped change the course of cinema. After a year-and-a-half, we finally saw them all! Here are some highlights from our movie watching journey:
We loved all of the silent movies, especially the Charlie Chaplin movies which are just amazing:
Modern Times (1936)
City Lights (1931)
The Gold Rush (1925)
Chaplin’s movies are the best - they’re funny, clever, well acted and have lots of great stunts.
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) is also another amazing film from this time with beautiful high production sets that feel otherworldly.
Our favorite decade for movies was the 1930s. These films were modern, playful, smart and silly, probably to relieve people from the pain of the great depression. Most striking of all, these movies revolve around female characters who are empowered, opinionated, weird and funny. I had assumed that female representation had only grown over time, but based on the movies we watched on this list, that’s not true. I’m not sure that films from today represent woman as well as they did in the 30s.
Our favorites:
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
A Night at the Opera (1935)
Duck Soup (1933)
The last two films are Marx Brothers movies which we had never seen before and loved.
40s movies on the AFI list are very brooding but still have the fun vibe of the 1930s films, with many of them being film noirs. The plots are very prominent, with great, fast-talking scripts. Most of the 40s films we saw felt as if they were written by Aaron Sorkin (West Wing fame) with lots of clever, dense dialogue. I might argue this decade represents a high point for cinema.
Our favorites:
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
All About Eve (1950)
Double Indemnity (1944)
Sunset Blvd. (1950)
Citizen Kane (1941)
Most of the 1950s movies on the list had a strong moral message, perhaps a reaction to the chaos and trauma of WWII. However, a lot of our favorites from this time didn’t lean so heavily on trying to impart a lesson.
Our favorites:
12 Angry Men (1957)
Some Like It Hot (1959)
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Rear Window (1954)
Vertigo (1958)
Psycho (1960)
The last three movies above are Hitchcock films which are fantastic.
The films from this time period are like nothing else of this list, they are raw, angry, depressing, violent and are very male oriented. Deaths are common in these movies but are rarely acknowledged as significant. Women are barely on screen and are usually prostitutes that get murdered halfway through. All or some of the main characters are randomly murdered often in the last few seconds of the film. The main characters typically have issues with expressing their feelings and frequently withdraw, lash-out, do drugs, kill or get killed. We found many of these movies were rough to watch. Here are a few examples of the tough ones, but there are many more:
Midnight Cowboy (1969)
Taxi Driver (1976)
Raging Bull (1980)
The Wild Bunch (1969)
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
We found the rape scene in Clockwork Orange unwatchable. Raging Bull and The Wild Bunch were an absolute grind for us to get through. Midnight Cowboy was my favorite from the list above, but still a tough movie to watch.
70s films are way over represented on this list, but it was an important and innovative time in film making.
Here are some of the movies from this time that we enjoyed:
The Godfather (1972)
The Graduate (1967)
In the Heat of the Night (1967)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Cabaret (1972)
Jaws (1975)
Star Wars (1977)
The 1980s are famous for its silly, light broad comedies. This list is missing some classic 80s comedies like The Princess Bride, Back to the Future, Ghostbusters etc. The 80s movies they do have on the AFI list are reflecting on trauma which makes sense given how traumatic the 70s movies were. E.T. looks at divorce, Tootsie looks at sexism, Sophie’s Choice looks at WWII and Platoon looks back at the Vietnam War. Unlike the 70s movies about trauma, the 80s movies create a bit of distance between the trauma and the viewer, making them much easier to watch.
Do the Right Thing was a real highlight for us — poignant, funny, emotional, well-made and sadly very relevant to this day. Outside of Do the Right Thing and In the Heat of the Night, the films on the AFI list have very few significant roles for people of color. In fact, it was not uncommon to see blackface in many of the older films on the AFI list.
Our 80s favorites:
Do the Right Thing (1989
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Blade Runner (1982)
Almost all of the 1990s movies on this list revolve around a fascination with violence. I’m not sure why that is, but that seemed to be the mood of the 90s!
Our favorites:
Goodfellas (1990)
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Schindler's List (1993)
1 The Godfather (1972)
2 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
3 Modern Times (1936)
4 Do the Right Thing (1989)
5 Rear Window (1954)
6 The Wizard of Oz (1939)
7 Star Wars (1977)
8 E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
9 Psycho (1960)
10 Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)
11 The Philadelphia Story (1940)
12 City Lights (1931)
13 A Night at the Opera (1935)
14 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
15 Apocalypse Now (1979)
16 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
17 Bringing Up Baby (1938)
18 Titanic (1997)
19 Cabaret (1972)
20 Vertigo (1958)
21 In the Heat of the Night (1967)
22 Pulp Fiction (1994)
23 Blade Runner (1982)
24 Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
25 12 Angry Men (1957)
Since this list is dominated by strong/interesting male characters, here are the films on the list that I think are great and also have strong female characters:
It Happened One Night (1934)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
All About Eve (1950)
Sunset Blvd. (1950)
Some Like It Hot (1959)
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
The Sound of Music (1965)
Cabaret (1972)
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Titanic (1997)
Let me know what films you think should be on a 100 best list!
For the past month I’ve been recovering from Covid and haven’t had enough energy to get back into painting just yet. So instead, I got on my computer and started experimenting with designing and printing my art on a variety of materials.
I’m experimenting with lots of materials (including traditional fine-art prints), but my shoe experiment has been an early success so I thought I’d share them in case anyone is interested in owning a pair or gifting them for the holidays.
I found a company that would make high quality shoes for me and gave them a try. The print came out great and the shoes are actually, very well made. I especially like the padded collar at the top which makes them more comfortable than any other high top shoe I’ve owned. I ordered my normal shoe size and they ended up fitting great and were comfortable.
I’ll be sharing more of my prints as I get them!
I’m excited to be releasing a new series of small works on Saturday, August 13th both in-person as well as online:
Come to Art by the Lake to see me and my new paintings! The event will be on Saturday, August 13th at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, NY from 10am - 4pm. I’ll be there to talk to visitors, do a painting demonstration and sell artwork. The event includes myself and over twenty artists.
For those that can’t make it to Cooperstown, you can see the event virtually by tuning in to my Instagram Live (@alexroediger) at 3PM on August 13th. I’ll give a tour of my work on display and answer questions. You’ll also be able to view and purchase my paintings here starting at 3PM. Also be sure to get notified by email of the Instagram Live and sale:
Here’s a selection of just a few of the 35+ works that will be available, many for the first time. All paintings are oil on wood panels, ready to hang.
My Red Shed Community Garden painting series (see below) will be available to own starting on Wednesday, June 15th. 10% of sales during the first week will be donated to Grow NYC.
I’ll have a special online pre-sale for Red Shed Garden members (includes 20% discount using the tool shed code) on Tuesday, June 14th starting at 6 PM.
My six day Red Shed Garden residency ended yesterday and I was able to complete six paintings! I’m very happy I was able to make so many works. It’s fun but also very challenging to paint out in the elements every day and to make an average of one painting a day. But overall I had a really great experience. I picked the perfect week in the year - it was mostly in the mid-70s and I got lucky with the rain - it rained a couple times but only at the very start or end of the day.
On Saturday I finished the painting I started on Friday and was able to make two more small paintings. The weather was intense on Saturday, 90° and very high humidity. I’m still recovering from all that heat and sun. But it was really nice to have so many friends come visit and to get all the support I did from folks at the garden.
Once the works are dry (about 3 weeks from now) I’ll be making the paintings available with a percent of the sales going to help raise funds for the garden. I’ll make a new blog post when the time comes to share details about the fundraising sale. Thanks to everyone who visited and for all the support! I had a great experience!
Today is my last day of my plein air week! I’ll be finishing the painting I was working on yesterday and hope to make at least one or maybe even two other works this afternoon. On top of these high expectations is the fact it’ll likely be 91° today! Thankfully no rain in the forecast. I’ll have to be sure to paint in the shade as much as possible.
I wasn’t able to finish my painting yesterday because of a late afternoon thunderstorm. I took shelter under an awning and painted there but it was just too dark for me to see well enough to finish my painting.
Be sure to stop by if you’re in the area to see my painting, say hi and check out the garden. Weather should be good, aside from being a bit hot. I’ll be there between 12-5pm. I’ll do one more update tomorrow that’ll show what I do today.
It took me two days, but I finally finished my wide painting! The weather yesterday was very overcast, which I think shows up in the painting a bit (even through the sky is blue). The scene is of a fig tree (center left), purple plum tree (center right) and lots of irises in bloom.
Today I’ll be working on a new painting today. The weather looks like it should be good until at least 5pm.
Come visit if you can!
Yesterday was another good weather day so I decided to work on a larger painting, or more specifically a longer painting. I’m only half way through painting it, so I’ll be finishing it today once the rain clears this morning.
The temperature for the next couple days will be in the high 60s, low 70s which is ideal. However the temperature on Saturday is expected to reach 91°! That should make for an exciting last day plein air painting.
I had another great day painting! The weather was perfect yesterday with a light breeze and temperatures in the 70s. I decided to paint the alliums in the garden which are these big, fun, goofy, Dr. Seuss flowers that rise up so high, they’re nearly eye level with me.
So that I wouldn’t be painting in the sun for 9 hours again, I changed by painting technique to using mostly a palette knife which greatly sped up the process. It ended up only taking me 3 1/2 hours to do yesterday’s painting!
I’ll probably end up using the same process again today, but on a bigger panoramic panel which should be exciting.
I’ll be in the garden from 12 - 5pm today, be sure to stop and say hi if you’re in Williamsburg.
I had a good first day painting yesterday! I got to paint all day despite a pretty dire rain prediction for early afternoon. I heard plenty of thunder all day, but it didn’t actually get to raining until the very end when I took shelter under an awning in the garden where I was able to finish the last little bit.
My biggest challenge is to make sure I can finish a painting in 5 hours versus the 9 hours it took me yesterday. 9 hours is a bit too intense. But the good thing about plein air painting is that the limitation of time really focuses me on how to paint more efficiently which usually makes for a more interesting work.
I appreciate everyone who stopped and said hi to me yesterday! Including the FedEX guy who stopped his truck when he saw me, came into the garden, and talked to me for ten minutes about what kind of art supplies he’s thinking about getting his girlfriend 😆. If you’re in Williamsburg, be sure to stop and say hi anytime this week. I’ll be at Red Shed Community Garden today from 1 - 6pm.
I’ll be at the garden today from 10AM - until when it rains.
Hope to see folks there!
I’m excited to spend next week plein air painting at my local community garden! From Monday, May 16th through Saturday, May 21st, I’ll be at Red Shed Community Garden, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I encourage anyone in the area to stop by and see my work in progress and to enjoy the garden’s amazing trees, blooming flowers, and the community vegetable garden. If you want to make art in the garden as well, feel free to bring your art supplies and come join me. I’ll be there every afternoon as long as it isn’t raining too much.
I will update this blog post daily with the work I’ve made, share my experience and update my schedule in case you’re interested in visiting. My hope is to make five paintings in six days!
Visit me in person:
Red Shed Community Garden
266 Skillman Ave., Brooklyn, NY (View in Google Maps)
Mon., May 16 - Sat., May 21, daily, 12 - 5PM (weather permitting)
Follow along online:
Come back to this blog post for daily updates starting on May 16th.
Below are a few Red Shed Community Garden artworks I’ve already made:
I recently bought an iPad and Apple Pencil and have been trying my hand at digital landscapes. I have no idea where this is going to take me, but I’m having a lot of fun trying out different techniques and styles.
Because my iPad is so convenient, I’ve been able to get more art-making done during the week using moments when I might not have serval hours to really get into an oil painting or don’t feel like lugging my whole painting set-up to a park. Instead I can easily draw at home or bring it with me to the park hassle free. For me, digital art isn’t a replacement for oil painting, but another way to make art when I don’t have the time to paint.
Although digital art is in the headlines these days because of NFTs, I won’t be making NFTs myself because of the environmental damage these cause (they require tons of energy to maintain). Instead, my hope is that I can get good enough at making digital landscapes that people might be interested in my work in other contexts - for the web, as prints or in other ways I haven’t even thought of.
Here are some of the digital landscapes I’ve made since I got my iPad this February:
For the last couple months I’ve been making studies of famous artists’ landscapes. I found the exercise to be really fun and each study I did provided me with great insights into techniques I can use in my own work. It’s really nice to get out of my own headspace for an afternoon and study how some of my favorite paintings were made.
At first, I wondered if I should try to make my version look as close to original as possible, but I realized that if I really focused on making an exact replica, I’d lose the spirit of the painting and just be caught up in unimportant details. So instead, I gave myself a few hours to make each one, focusing on getting the general gist of the painting and being open to what unexpected techniques I might discover along the way.
For me, the value of the paintings was the experience in making them, not in having them, so I’m going to make a few of my studies available starting this Sunday in the hopes of finding some new loving homes for them. You can see and read about my experience making these works below:
The painting above is a study I did of Egon Schiele’s Einzelne Häuser. Like so many people, I’m amazed by Schiele’s skill. Reportedly, Egon Schiele asked his idol Gustav Klimt during their first meeting, "Do I have talent?" Klimt looked through his portfolio and responded, "Talent? Yes! Much too much!" Schiele’s style is so simple and accessible that I’m still not sure I understand how he got there.
In the work I studied, Einzelne Häuser, I love how Schiele breaks up the picture plane with long horizontal stripes and a beautiful patchwork of colorful squares in the center that make up the house. There’s also no blue or white or any color that allows you to mentally escape or breathe. Instead the sky and earth are painted with a dirty yellow wash with a house the pallet of a harlequin’s outfit. The painting is both colorful and muted, cute and haunting. I love how his paintings capture and combine both emotions so well.
Above is my study of Cityscape #1 by Richard Diebenkorn. Similar to Schiele’s painting, this work has an amazing jigsaw puzzle quality to it with its interlocking shapes. Unlike Scheile’s painting, Diebenkorn’s painting has a thin band of blue sky at the very top of the picture. Both Diebenkorn’s and Schiele’s work flatten the landscape in a really clever way, making the backgrounds feel just as interesting as the foreground.
I love Chaïm Soutine’s wonderfully twisted buildings and abstract landscapes. The painting above is a study I did of Soutine’s painting Paysage. Although his work is over a 100 years old, I think his style has feels very contemporary. I can see a lot of Soutine’s techniques in more modern work by Richard Diebenkorn’s landscapes and Willem de Kooning’s abstract paintings. Landscape painting is a great genre for articulating complicated emotions and I think Soutine found a way to beautifully communicate through the medium. His distorted views are a reminder to me of how emotions can warp our perceptions about the world around us.
Vue de Céret is the second Soutine painting I made a study of. I feel like I could keep doing studies of his work and learn something with each one. I love the expressive, chaotic vibe of this work and painted it like it was a giant pile of multi-colored spaghetti. Even though it looks like a spontaneous mess, I actually think the composition of this painting is really great and in many ways is just as thoughtful as Diebenkorn’s very analytical looking paintings.
Last but not least, my first love, Vincent van Gogh. My painting is 10 x 8 inches, much smaller than the original and for that reason the details of the tree are much simpler. In copying this painting, I learned just how out-there Van Gogh’s color selection really is. Had I not copied this painting I never would have believed you could make a successful landscape with lime-green, black, yellow, white and a dark blue. It’s a color palette I’d only use for an energy drink label. But it works. I also appreciate the simplicity in his color selection and his less is more strategy. Also this being said, I have a suspicion that the photo of the painting I was using was tinted a bit more yellow than the actual painting. Regardless, I was inspired by the photo and really enjoy thinking about color from a more unconventional way - especially when it comes to landscape painting which can sometimes veer towards being more conventional.
I hope you enjoyed my studies! You can take a look at more of my original works using the link below and be sure to go to here to see my newly available works this Sunday!
When it’s going well, making art is really fun. It’s rewarding to be creative, to improve my skills and to sell my work to people who love it. However I didn’t always feel that way. Why be an artist after all? It forces you to work hard, be vulnerable, feel rejected by yourself and others, be isolated, question everything, and for what?
Exhausted and resentful of the effort required to be both an artist and an adult, I quit making art for a few years but I ended up feeling mentally and physically ill because of it. I learned that whether I want to be, or not, I am an artist. Being an artist, I thought (in the most dramatic way possible), is a chronic, life long affliction and I would only be healthy if I came to terms with this unfortunate but manageable condition. Thinking you have to be an artist sounds like a silly cross to bear. It makes me laugh to think about it that way. But I think my challenges in accepting my artistic side is probably relatable for many creative people. And when I explored my hang ups on being an artist I came up with some insights I found helpful.
The first insight I had was that I’m human (I’m not sure I’ve ever fully accepted this obvious fact). And to be human is to acknowledge the need to express myself. My perfectionism said that I shouldn’t need to work on self-expression because I should somehow be a fully actualized person who gracefully and appropriately express themselves at all times. But of course that’s silly, people at best, are messy, emotional and complicated. It’s not only OK to want to be an artist, but very healthy. We are all humans and all in need of expressing ourselves.
My second insight is that I have internalized the complicated relationship society has with creativity. For instance, in movies, the “good guy” usually enforces the status quo while the “bad guy” is usually the creative one, making something new, interesting and challenging. But movies frequently show creativity as the path to destruction and greed. In many ways, our culture says we shouldn’t be different, make new things or even be emotional. Instead we should be pleasant, profitable, and productive. But we are more than just cogs in the socio-economic status quo. We should question, improve and be the beneficiaries of an economic system designed to make our lives better and more humane. Not everything we humans create is wonderful. But I think it’s important for me to reject the darker part of our culture that feels needlessly threatened by creativity. I can be much more open to embracing my own ideas and embracing the idea that I can be a force for positive change.
The last insight is that I’m hard on myself. Society reinforces the idea that we are good because we beat ourselves up when we are bad. But, as Mister Rogers tried to imprint in us, we are actually good just for being who we are. Growing up requires us to learn to suppress our desires to some extent, which in turn sets us up to judge ourselves as right or wrong, good or bad. But I think growing up should also include lessons about how to experience all that life has to offer beyond good and bad labels. Creativity can’t be sustained in a mind that filters life exclusively through judgement. I’ve learned that creativity comes from a feeling of openness and a lack of judgement. It feels great to give myself permission to make what I want and to love all my creations.
We are all human, all creative, and we are all good for being who we are. With those insights in mind, I’ve been able to end my resentment towards my own creativity. And although my life is still a huge work-in-progress on every level, it at least feels nice to be at peace with my own artistic desires and to see my creativity as a natural extension of myself.
After living in New York City for a collective twenty-one years, I got a car for the first time in my city living. My wife, Ariel and I bought the car in spring of last year at the start of the pandemic, in part, so we could do something to relieve the stress and isolation of being trapped in two mile radius of our home in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In the past, we would usually visit a museum, gallery, or explore other parts of the city during our free time, however, since the start of the pandemic we’ve been taking a lot more short day trips into nature, to a beach or other outdoor setting. Our trips have also been a big inspiration for many of my landscape paintings.
If you’re a New Yorker and have a car or occasional access to one, you might enjoy visiting some of the places we’ve gone to. Below are 30 destinations, all an hour-and-a-half away or less that we’ve recently visited and would recommend. All of these locations are easy visits and don’t require long hikes or steep elevations. I think each location is worth visiting, however I put a ⭐️ in front of our favorites.
50 minute drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge Center is our favorite place to visit. We’ve been here on countless Saturdays during all times of the year. The main trail is only a mile-and-a-half loop but we often spend several hours here because there are so many amazing birds to see and great views of the ocean and city. The loop juts out into Jamaica Bay with a brackish pond in the center and is an incredible birding area. It’s not uncommon to see hawks, osprey, egrets, swans and many unusual birds as they use this area to rest during migration. There are also trails across the street that are worth going to as well. Strangely, there are an unusual amount of cactus growing here, something I wouldn’t expect to see in New York City.
I’ve taken a taxi and a public bus here before, although it’s not the most accessible without a car.
50 minute drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Fort Tilden is also a favorite location with beautiful beaches, hiking trails in the sand dunes and abandoned military architecture to explore. The fort supposedly had nuclear missiles here when the site was active. The missile launch pad is usually behind a closed gate but you can visit most of the old buildings and gun casemates at any time. We’ve also enjoyed visiting the beach in the winter when no one is there expect the occasional dog walker.
You can park in Fort Tilden from mid-September to mid-June. During the busy season, you can park at Jacob Riis Beach and walk over. Fort Tilden is somewhat accessible by public transportation and is a popular destination for bikers.
50 minute drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Rockaway is a great beach that is accessible by public transportation as well as by and car. We love spending the day here in our beach tent and have recently even seen seals there. There are lots of great food options on the boardwalk and on the main drag at 95th street including the bagels at Stop 1 Bagel & Deli.
There’s free parking in a loop right in front of the beach. In the summer, we just loop around a couple times and get a spot fairly quickly.
30 minute drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
We visited Forest Park on a spooky, foggy, December morning. Although this is an urban park smack in the middle of Queens, there are sections that are completely wooded which makes the park the closest location to get into nature.
Easily accessible by public transportation.
30 minute drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
We enjoyed the Queens County Farm, you can walk quite a bit outdoors on the property and see various animals and plants growing, including wandering chickens, but I would probably recommend it most to people with kids.
40 minute drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Fort Wadsworth is an old fort and park that’s fun to walk around and has great views of the Verrazzano Bridge. It’s not especially memorable but it’s definitely worth visiting if you’re looking for a walk and to make a day trip to Staten Island. I recommend starting at Fort Wadsworth and then heading over to Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden and/or go to Greenbelt Nature Center.
45 minute drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
We really enjoyed Snug Harbor and was the highlight of our Staten Island trips. It’s a botanic garden with different areas including a farm, rose garden and more. They also had food available to purchase and outdoor seating. We’ll definitely come back here. It’s probably not a whole day destination so you may want to visit Fort Wadsworth or visit Greenbelt Nature Center as well.
45 minute drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Greenbelt is a surprisingly large forest in the middle of Staten Island with plenty of trails and even a lake. You can easily spend the afternoon exploring all the trails here. It’s not the most amazing woods I’ve ever been to but it is nice and very close.
40 minute drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
The beach at Orchard Beach is rather small and not especially inspiring, however if you walk along the nature trail just to the north, you can see a surprising number of birds and walk across a narrow boardwalk to a small beautiful island in the bay. The walk back along the western shore is also nice.
Orchard Beach is accessible by public transportation.
40 minute drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
The New York Botanical Garden is the largest and nicest botanical garden I’ve ever been to. You can visit all day and still not see everything. I recommend not missing the rose garden and checking out what art exhibits are currently available.
The garden is somewhat accessible by public transportation.
- More destinations below -
35 minute drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Green-Wood Cemetery which is intended to be both a place to mourn as well as a destination to be enjoyed. We spent all day here and saw a fair amount of nature, amazing architecture, over-the-top grave designs and paid our respects to several famous people including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Leonard Bernstein and others.
I was really amused to find the mausoleum for the inventor of the hotdog, Charles Feltman. His grave was everything I expected, although honestly the addition of some hotdog sculptures would have been nice. Nathan of Nathan’s Famous Hotdogs was his understudy and later undercut Feltman’s business by selling hotdogs at half the price but not before Feltman made his own fortune in Coney Island.
45 minute drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Surprisingly, there’s a large abandoned airfield in Brooklyn and it’s open to the public. Floyd Bennett is across Jamaica Bay from JFK airport and was used prior to JFK being built. You can drive up and down the tarmac when you visit and stop anywhere, including at the end of each runway where there are several rocky beaches I like to explore. The airport also has a rec center at the old air traffic control tower. On the east shore, there is an antique airplane museum (always closed when I visit), and a boat launch which I once used for a small sailboat. At the end of the runway on the north shore is an RC plane club. The remote control planes flown there are fun to watch and incredibly fancy - the planes include beautiful prop planes and jets that probably cost as much as a full sized plane. The airport also has campsites available between the runways.
It’s hard to say what exactly the focus is for a visit here, it’s mostly just fun to drive on the runways and explore all the random ways the airport is being repurposed.
1 hour drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Long Beach is a nice beach town just outside the city and is only an hour away on Long Island Rail Road. We’ve stayed overnight there at an airbnb several times (without a car) but it can also be a nice day trip. The town feels a little bit like it’s part of the city, but it also has a lot of seaside charm. If you have a car and are visiting Long Beach, I also recommend visiting Marine Nature Study Area.
1 hour drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Near Long Beach is the Marine Nature Study Center which we loved. There’s a great walkway that takes you out into the marsh for beautiful views of the marsh, ocean and is great for birding.
1h 20m drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
I have been to very few beaches nicer than Robert Moses. The beach has beautiful views, great walks in the grassy dunes and you can easily walk into the car-free and magical Fire Island neighborhoods filled with beautiful beach houses and thousands of tiny little deer.
50 minute drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Bailey Arboretum was one of our favorite north shore destinations. I just couldn’t get over the fact there are redwood trees living on Long Island! It only takes an hour or two to visit, but it’s well worth the trip. There are also a few birds in rehabilitation, like owls and hawks you can visit with. There are also many other good spots to stop at afterwords including North Shore Wildlife Sanctuary, Planting Fields Arboretum, Welwyn Preserve, Sagamore Hill National Historic Site.
50 minute drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
This was a nice walk in the woods that included a boardwalk bridge over a pond. We went here after Bailey Arboretum and enjoyed our 1-2 hour visit.
1 hour drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Planting Fields is one of many former estates built by turn-of-the-century industrialists we visited along the north shore. Planting Fields has a great collection of trees and gardens including a miniature conifer forest.
1h 15m drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
A previous estate, Caumsett is an especially large wilderness area with lots of paths in the woods which eventually lead to dramatic cliffs overlooking the ocean. This is a good spot for longer walks in the woods and you can easily spend a full afternoon here. You can also walk down and along the beach. We enjoyed the small cafe on-site.
1 hour drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
I particularly enjoyed my walk here because it was low tide and I had lots of fun exploring the tidal inlet and salt marsh around the point. The estate’s mansion was closed when we visited but is home to the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County.
- More destinations below -
Selection of some of my paintings of New York City, the Catskills and Long Island. See more here.
1h 15m drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Sagamore Hill was the home of Teddy Roosevelt. We walked around the grounds, the woods and beach, and although the property is nice it’s not that large in terms of being a nature destination. I think it would be worth going back here if we were already in the area and/or for a tour of the house which was closed during our visit.
1h 15m drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Blydenburgh has several historic houses and is largely wooded with a long trail that circles the lake at the center of the park. We were there on an especially cold day in the winter but I think this would be a nice walk when the temperatures are above freezing. It’s a good spot to get a lot of mileage in on the loop around the lake. Blydenburgh is halfway out on Long Island but it actually doesn’t take that long to get there because it’s just off the expressway.
1 hour drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
The mansion on Sands Point is a straight up gigantic castle that was built for Howard Gould and completed for Daniel Guggenheim in 1912 and looks like it could be a film location for the TV show Succession. I’d love to take a tour inside some day, but on the day we visited, we were happy to walk along the beach and through the estate’s wooded trails. The woods there are a bit overrun with vines, but the trail is clear and we still enjoyed the walk.
1h 20m drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Target Rock has a small path in the woods that quickly leads to the beach. I recommend walking south on the beach down to the point and back. We loved the long beach walk at low tide and found it was great for finding sea worn wood, glass and seashells for our collection. We were told there was a seal resting on the rocks that we just missed seeing.
1 hour drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
This is a small but beautiful garden estate on a bay that I recommend stoping at briefly on your way to the William Cullen Bryant Preserve which is just down the street.
1 hour drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
The Bryant Preserve is fairly large, with hiking trails, a large sculpture garden, and is home to the Nassau County Museum of Art. This spot can easily be a full afternoon destination. We weren’t able to visit the museum during our visit, but hope to come back to see an exhibit.
1 hour drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
The Rockefeller State Preserve was a nice stop for us on our way down from visiting family upstate. The grounds are very large, have lots of great hiking paths and includes the Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture which was fun to walk through and see the greenhouse plantings.
1h 30m drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
The Mt. Taurus/Bull Hill Quarry is just outside the town of Cold Spring and is one of my favorite destinations. You can easily hike up and explore the quarry floor and then take the trail that goes around the side of the quarry and leads to great views of the town of Cold Spring. For a more ambitious hike, I’ve taken Metro-North to the Breakneck Ridge stop, hiked up to the top and then walked down to the quarry and then to the train stop in Cold Spring.
1h 30m drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Constitution Marsh is a great spot near Cold Spring, with an extensive walkway that extends out into the Hudson River marsh. It takes about an hour to explore and I’ve heard parking can be an issue, but we didn’t have a problem during our mid-week August visit. There is also a waterfall within walking distance of the parking lot that is worth checking out.
1h 20m drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Ward Pound Ridge is great for a longer walk in beautiful woods that feels a bit like the Adirondacks to me. The reservation includes a nice view of the nearby reservoir as well as a large petroglyph rock and a mini cave which was once occupied by a man who made his own leather clothes and was known as the “Leatherman.”
Hope you enjoyed seeing all the places we’ve visited so far!
Let me know in the comments below if you have questions about where we’ve visited or if you have suggestions for future day trips we should try.
Also, be sure to check out my available landscape paintings here: