In recent years I've thought about larger format painting and a more intuitive approach to composition. I took a canvas I'd painted rather non-objectively in complementary stripes above with a solid field below. It came to me to draw a bird clinging to a nest. With the background already established it became an exercise in compositional balance. What it became was a gift... a new way to approach narrative work. "If I Stay explores the dilemma posed by threatening circumstances: to stay with the familiar or to flee to the unknown. Here, a bird clings to its nest while fire rages all around it.
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| If I Stay, acrylic and oil on canvas, 2016, 12" x 12" |
Larger format paintings followed using larger color field works that I'd abandoned. I was accustomed to setting up a still life in the studio and painting what I saw. Thinking about how to populate those fields with objects that would balance with scale and color was quite freeing. "In all Probability" was the next on my easel. It was built on the investment model called the Efficient Frontier where best long-term yields fall within a graphed parabola. The parabola intersects with the marks of the Golden Mean, both of which are drawn in the background.
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| In All Probability, 2016, technique mixte on canvas, 24" x 60" |
Next came "Galileo" which had a distinct narrative in mind. It's all about creation and studying it with unbounded curiosity and wonder... looking up, looking down, looking closely. I have imagined that after the world was spoken into existence, the world's first whisper in response was Sanctus, and then the heavens opened up with song. Referenced in this work: Galileops pursuit of scientific truth; the gradual accumulation of knowledge; the Fibonacci Sequence; the music of Schumann and Brahms; and my own painting process of creating images gradually.
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| Galileo, 2023, technique mixte on canvas, 36" x 36" |
