"Black Mountain Fall" is acrylic on canvas, 36x60." This past October, some friends were kind enough to let me and the kids go stay in their beautiful home in Black Mountain, North Carolina. The colors of the autumn leaves and the grandiosity of the mountains were incredibly inspiring. I took pictures of the vista from their house and did a pour as soon as I returned to Raleigh.

After it dried, I applied some glazes to achieve the warmth I wanted. Then I sketched the silhouette of the mountains and trees with chalk. Chalk can be wiped off dry acrylic paint with a wet sponge, making it the perfect tool for designing a mask. I started with the exact mountainous horizon from my photos, but it didn't translate into a very interesting silhouette. Part of the aesthetic intrigue of mountains is usually the depth and layers in the ranges. So I ended up loosely basing my horizon on the photos but exaggerating it. 

When it was time to do the trees, again, at first I followed my photos and had the trees coming straight up from the bottom. And again, when flattened into a silhouette, this did not look right. It looked like the mountain line was just bumpy ground with trees coming up from it. So I modified my design to have the branches coming in from the sides and not touching the horizon. This gave me the expanse of space I wanted from the eye back to the horizon line.

The first mask I applied was a robin's egg blue, like the clear skies that graced us for part of our stay in Black Mountain.

While that made representational sense, it didn't feel right to me. It wasn't warm enough, and it felt very separate from the colors in the pour. I decided to change (drastically) to a warm muted gold that would speak to the pour. This brought the piece together, allowing the eye to follow the gold tones all the way around the composition. Because of this change of direction, I was able to leave a slight blue halo (outline) around the mask. This is a neat detail that really helps emphasize the shapes of the trees and the horizon line. 

This piece will hang in my friends' home in Black Mountain and will always remind me of the warmth and beauty I experience there.

"Sidewalk Magnolia Leaves" is acrylic on canvas, 36x36." This piece, like many of my recent works, is a pouring-and-mask painting. I guess it's just really where I want to be with my work right now. When I go for walks in my neighorhood, I pass under several giant magnolia trees. In the early summer, I started seeing these giant velvety leaves on the sidewalks in the most amazing range of golds and browns. I picked up a few one day and brought them home to use as color inspiration. I created a highly-textured pour using golds, greens, and browns, and sprayed alcohol to disrupt the surface. I chose a midnight blue for the mask to further push the warmth of the gold. 

I did something I've never done before with this painting. The dark gray-blue I used for my mask is by nature transparent (Payne's Gray), so I added some white to give it opacity. Transparent paints tend to be glossy which can create a glare and reveal brushstrokes, especially with dark colors. When I painted my mask in my studio, it was very flat and uniform. When I placed the painting on my mantel under spot lights, all the brushwork leapt out at me, and not in a good way! You could see how I'd painted around the shapes, not a good effect. This morning, while it was still dark out outside, I set the painting up on my easel with one strong spotlight to create a glare. I stood where I could see the brushwork in the dark mask, and I painted... with glare, basically. It was very interesting and not something I've ever done.

"Spring Maple" is 36x36" acrylic on canvas. It is another exploration of the pouring and mask technique. This piece was created specifically through a series of demonstration videos I produced from my home for employees at the company where I work. They can simply watch and enjoy my process or attempt it themselves as a creative outlet during this stressful time. I have one coworker who's since painted an entire series using this method... an artist is born! This was my first foray into instruction, and I truly enjoyed it. I hope to do another series early in the new year. This particular image was inspired by photos I took out on my walks of the riotous reds, golds, and greens in the new foliage of the neighborhood maple trees.

"Organic Silhouette in Blue, Magenta, and Gold" is acrylic on canvas, 30x24."  This is a personal commission.  My client requested a bright and dramatic pouring using those three colors.  I made sure she was okay with the wide range of secondary colors that could result from that combination.  She said go for it!

This pouring gave me unexpected results.  My intention was a "wet-into-wet" approach, or watered-down paints on a watered-down surface.  However, two factors took the painting in a different direction that day.  First, it was cold in my garage where I was doing this.  Second, the way that particular canvas was prepared by the manufacturer, it wasn't absorbing the water well.  The paint moved around on the canvas in tight rivulets with occasional bursts of feathering and blending.  I sprayed it with water to encourage the pigment to spread in a splattered fashion.  Then, as with all pourings, I had to walk away and come back the next morning! 

My next step was to start carving out my organic shape using a mask of neutral gray paint.  I let the shape of the pour guide me as I cut away around it. 

I then began experimenting with glazes, or thin layers of transparent paint, to rein the colors in.  I chose to eliminate the white because it was detracting from the soft glow of the pigments.  You may also notice the canvas has rotated 180 degrees at this point.  I try to turn abstract pieces regularly while working on them.  Changing the perspective helps me design and problem-solve.  The final orientation ended up being vertical because, well, it just felt right to me.  I also changed the background color to a warm brown instead of gray.

"Poplar Tulip" is 36x36," acrylic on canvas.  This is the first piece I've completed during the current stay-at-home conditions.  After we became locked down, I quickly got into the much-needed habit of going for daily walks in my neighborhood.  I find I'm endlessly inspired by the beauty of nature and the incredible spring weather we've had this year.  On one of my walks, I kept seeing poplar tulips on the ground.

I know these are commonplace here, but I think the bright warm green and orange in them is remarkable.  I decided I would attempt to capture those colors in a pouring.  This would also be a chance to test-drive the painting corner I had cleaned out in my garage.  I can't do pourings in my home studio because they are extremely messy; that space is in the middle of my house and shared with my kids.  I prepared my paints and canvas.

Pourings are very much a hurry-up-and-wait process.  I laid down the initial pour, then had to force myself to walk away.  I've been asked why I don't use a blow dryer to accelerate the drying process.  While that works for some types of painting, I don't like how the air pressure from the dryer pushes the paint around.  It fights with the slow evolution driven by the water's motion.  Here was the initial pour, still very wet.

Here is how it dried... quite different!  The piece has been rotated 180 degrees between these two images.

From here, I used my original inspiration photo to carve out my poplar shapes using a light sky blue mask.  I rotated it many times while working on it.  This piece brings me joy because it conveys the feeling I get when I look up at my poplar trees on a sunny, warm day and see them full of those colorful tulips.

"Iris" is acrylic on canvas, 48x60."  This was a spontaneous piece.  In December, I had made a flower arrangement for my kitchen using white calla lilies, purple alstroemeria, and a cobalt blue glass vase.  The drama and rich color combination inspired me, and I came into work simply having to capture it somehow.  Here is a photo of the arrangement.

I mixed up my colors based on the flower arrangement.  I find with pours, the more limited the palette the better.  Too many different colors will fight and ultimately become muddy.

I laid down the pour, which initially looked like this.  I knew it might change a lot through the drying process, and I would have to wait until the next day to see what I really had to work with.

This is what it looked like the next day, not too different from how it began.

I had established color.  The next step was to create the botanical shapes.  I really enjoy rendering by using masks to create negative shapes (the spaces between objects).  I used my original photograph of the flower arrangement to guide me as I cut in those shapes.  Carefully the piece started to take on its leaves, stems, and petals.  For the mask, I chose a range of soft greens.  I know there were no irises in the inspirational arrangement, but for me, the painting itself took on the qualities of an iris.

"Dancing Stones I & II" are acrylic on paper, 26x40" each.  These pieces evolved slowly on the back burner in my studio.  Almost two years ago, I did a big pouring on loose canvas on my studio floor.  The paint soaked through and created a mess.  There were some interesting shapes and colors happening in that mess, so I grabbed a couple of large sheets of watercolor paper and laid them down to absorb the paint.  Then I set them aside to dry, not really concerned with the results at that point.  Every now and then, when I needed to get my hands into something, I'd pull out these papers and play, pouring and splattering paint, gradually building up what became a very active and multi-layered surface.

    

When we needed a large pair of paintings for a certain location, I decided it was time to tame these into finished works.  I used glazes (thin, transparent applications of paint) to create the rounded shapes.  To push depth, I added shadows to make the shapes appear to overlap.  I continued to build back levels on levels of these floating pebbles.  The largest, lightest shapes sit at the back and anchor the tumbling composition.  Those were created by carving in negative shapes (the spaces between) with a smooth, light gray mask.  I wanted the gray to be clean and quiet to contrast with and accentuate the textures in the stones.