"Inhale, Exhale"

18x36", acrylic and mixed media on canvas

I started experimenting with turquoise and found that it's a powerful color! I kept having to return to the area where I painted it and try to cover it up. Eventually it calmed down to the point where it's just present. Meanwhile, this emotional painting emerged. 

Also, after taking the picture and cleaning it up, I suddenly see new things in it. Do I change them? Leave them? I think I'll live with it and see what happens.

"The Game"

(Not available.)

30x40", acrylic and mixed media on canvas

One weekend a couple of years ago, when a few of us were touring wine country, I surreptitiously took pictures of people. This came out of one such picture. I think my two favorite things about it are the way that the focal point is way off center, and the eyes behind the sunglasses, which I invented and which came out surprisingly well!

"Abstract Figure 2"

14x11", oil on canvas board

This was another fast painting done in class. The straight edges and lines come from using a color shaper, which is sort of like a palette knife, but softer. Someone in class wanted some additional color, so we added a scarf to the pose. Maybe I should have titled this "The Striped Scarf" or some such.

"Abstract Figure 1"

14x11", oil on canvas board

This was a fast painting I did in an abstract figurative class that artist and teacher Michael Azgour taught at the Pacific Art League. So, in class we would have warm-ups and exercises, of course. In one we would have only a limited amount of time to fill the entire canvas. Then, in this lesson he also suggested that we add a geometric shape (in this case a grid) and use elements of it to abstract the figure. I'm not sure I integrated the grid and the figure, but it did keep my painting looser.

This is painted from a live model, and there is an immediacy that I like, and the rapid brush strokes (and some pencil scribbles) worked. In this case. You often end up with dimensions that are way out of whack. I assume that the better you get, the more often you get accurate dimensions. But even very experienced artists say they do a lot of throw-away paintings. Or paint-overs, I guess.