New Works in Progress, Studio View, 2025
I know, the timing feels off to be writing a ‘looking ahead’ post when it’s already April, but things have been moving slowly this year. If I could only kick my addiction to running, I would have more energy to studio. Thing is, I love to be outside and physically active. It clears my mind and makes me strong and healthy. Painting is a lifelong journey for me, so every time I exercise, I feel that I am ensuring I’ll be well enough to continue painting for many years to come. Hopefully this year I will find greater balance in what is important.
From a technical standpoint I’ve been experimenting with a new color palette that is rooted in primary colors plus the all-important depth and connective tissue that black brings to my work. I’ve been trying to get used to being increasingly okay with sloppy, messy, whatever else comes out of me and onto the canvas. Letting that chaos inform the next step forward to the next discovery. I’m finding joy in playful moments with graphite sticks and China markers and scraping out paint with pointy things that are laying around the studio, kitchen, laundry room, and outside.
I also decided to use up the rest of the prefab canvases in my studio, to make room for custom sizes. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with prefabricated surfaces. They are a huge time-saver and many are well-made. I am sure I will go back to using them when it makes sense to do so, but this year I want to feel more invested in my work in a more meaningful way. I am finding that by preparing the surfaces myself, a certain level of prior commitment is established that will help push me to new places. I am thinking holistically about the pieces—their proportions, their edges, the personalization of their format—which allows them to become a complete expression as opposed to a painting of specifically this or that. As Matisse wrote in his Essay “Notes of a Painter” (1908), “What I am after, above all, is expression.”
Blue Floral Dress (detail), oil on canvas, 2025
Line and quality of line are becoming my subject matter. While I still intend to explore the figure, because it is such an important aspect of my ideas on the value of self-portraiture in art, there is something very freeing about allowing the marks and decisions themselves to become the subject. To add, something very hidden and innate is revealed about myself when I place an abstract work next to one of my figurative pieces. I can make visual associations that I never knew existed, and I learn from this. I was never very comfortable with abstract approaches in the past, but for some reason this year things are clicking into place.
The images in this post include a group shot of some of my recent paintings in the studio and a detail of a figurative painting. The figures were started in 2019/2020 and recently reworked. The abstract pieces are my way of building upon my visual vocabulary through authentic experimentation and risk taking. I rarely feel comfortable about anything I am making, and it feels strange to present you with a staged group shot, but I am growing to understand that my total lack of equilibrium and not knowing where I am headed is actually the preferred state of being.