Inside the
studio.
Painting today. Inquiries welcome.
The archetypal, age-old iconography of a boy and his dog, and the deeper remnants of the dog star, keep the connection between the astral and the earthly — a slice through the center, through the leash connection that both leads and follows.
Making one of these is a full-body event. Books open on the floor — art history, anatomy, mythology, whatever the painting is asking for that day. Reference images pinned to the wall and on the iPad. The notebooks from the week before, still legible, still wet. Whatever I've been reading bleeds into whatever I'm painting; the canvas is the place those threads finally get to argue with each other.
Music loud enough to be a co-author. I move around — dancing, sometimes singing, mostly cursing at the mark I just made. Barefoot. No phone. No clock. Just the canvas, the books, the speakers, and the question the painting is trying to answer. The work is not made by sitting still. It is made by circling it, leaning in, stepping back, putting on a different track, and asking again.
The painting tells me when it's hungry and when it's full. My only job is to keep showing up.
- Liquitex Soft Body Acrylics — cadmium yellow, cadmium red, cobalt blue, mars black, titanium white; a deep stock running through the next several canvases
- Sennelier oil sticks — for the bold, oily outlines
- Posca paint pens — opaque line work and lettering
- Caran d'Ache Neocolor II crayons — for marks, scribbles, and text
- Stretched linen and cotton, gesso-primed — now scaling up to 200 cm
- Liquitex Freestyle large-scale brushes, VTech brushes, palette knives, and bare hands