If it ain't broke, change everything

Winter Color, 2008. oil on panel 8 x 10

There are times when I realize that I'm in a rut. It's time to mix it up and change things. I start a piece that I don't really know how to make it work. I explore. I make mistakes. I mumble to myself about how bad a painter I am. I get mad at the canvas. But sometimes my experiments work. And my painting change and, I believe, improve. So you get Winter Color which is different than anything I've done before. I'm excited to see where it will lead.

The Other Three

Warm Twilight, 2007. oil on panel, 16 x 16

Warm Twilight and Orchard Ranch were the first two paintings that I brought to The Vault. They were not a orginally painted with any thought that they would go together, they just happened to to be the same size and I didn't really think anything about it at the time. But shortly after talking them to the gallery, I get a call from the owner asking if I was planning to do any more paintings that size. A collector was interested in four paintings in the same format and liked the first two that were already at the gallery. I had no immediate plans to make any

The Orchard Ranch, 2007. oil on panel, 16 x 16

other paintings that were going to the same size, but I did have two other panels o fthat size that were laying around the studio, so I started thinking about what I could do with last two...It was strange the first two were not suppose to go together and now I was making two more to go with the other two. It was Kris at The Vault who sort of suggested that I make the four seasons out of the four panels...so I just when with it. Cold Weather came first and then Around from the last post was the last to be finished. I think the four pieces work

Cold Weather, 2007. oil on panel, 16 x 16

together, even if they were not originally meant to work together.

Recent Work

Around, 2007. oil on panel, 16 x 16

This is a painting that was the last in a series of four paintings that I did for The Vault. I am quite pleased with the sky since it was one that has been bumping around in my head for some time and could never make it work in my previous attempts. I couldn't figure out what color the blue had to be to make the yellowish/orangeish color work. It turned out that the blue wasn't really a true blue at all, but more of a green blue. Once that color relationship was established it then made putting the rest of the painting together much easier and it fell into place rapidly. It only took me four or five false starts to get to this painting, which is fairly typical for me when I am trying something new. That process goes like this: I see a color relationship outside and I think to myself, "Hmmm, that could make an interesting painting...I wonder what color I will have to use in order make a painting feel like this?" I go back to my studio and give it a go. At times I hit it right off the bat (but I can count those experiences on two hands)-others, like with this painting, I struggle to find the right colors that will work with what I have in mind. It's a funny process and not predicable at all.