Tuesday, August 12

Something as simple as altering the color palette can change an artist’s approach. What strikes me as of late is how my canvases are increasingly reminiscent of my older work on sheet copper. The ability of oil to take on seemingly infinite textures and surface reads is something I am enjoying.

Sometimes an idea comes. It may be from anything; I did an entire series of small paintings once from sharpie sketches of shadows on walls. Music, a road trip, a rusty banged-up door leading into a restaurant’s kitchen, these are all fodder for my arsenal in the studio. A single line of paint across surface opens the door to a multitude of perceptions and begins a process of decisions which ultimately lead to the finished picture.

I hope this blog has illustrated a journey. Perhaps in some small way, one can see how an artist’s mind works; beginning with an idea and exhausting it through multiple variations. It is not how all artists’ work. It is not even how I always work, though usually it is. I hope that looking at posts from March until now there is a recognizable line of inquiry, and that its process has been sufficiently illustrated. What lies behind the paper masking on the two paintings above is exactly what one might suppose, given what I’ve just talked about. Pure color. Bright, vibrant, confrontational and sublime. The push-pull of surface, -not for illusion’s sake, but for punctuation. The visual vernacular, my own new slang, this is what I have endeavored to convey through this blog.

The journey is far from over. This particular series of paintings may or may not be winding down, but there are always new ideas, perceptions and understandings which drive me ever onward.