8 years ago on Election Day I was hit by inspiration.  Last Tuesday I was hit again.  I had no plans to do an Election Day piece 11/8 but when I got to work that morning I was overwhelmed with what needed to happen for me, on canvas, right then.  It was going to be entirely about process and the experience was loaded with democratic symbolism for me.  I had no clue what the end product would be. 

I wanted to do a drip piece.  Working with drips is... both a controlled and chaotic technique.  You can start a drip in a certain direction and maybe even manipulate it by tilting or flattening your substrate or adding/subtracting water.  Still it will surprise you and go where you don't expect it to go, jump to the side suddenly, sometimes join another drip.  Running my drips was just as much about me applying them as me waiting to see what they would do, an interactive process.  My initial approach was elementary, running a range of blue drips from one end and red drips from the other.  Some of them went all the way to the end; some stopped short.  Some crossed over to the drips coming from the other side.

Day 2 was a day of adding more lines, more voices, more noise…

On day 3, I needed to start finding a pattern, a larger picture, making sense from the overwhelming input.  The contrast and visual activity was so high that it actually made my eyes and head hurt to work on it this day.  I needed it to settle, to find cohesion. 

Day 4 was when I decided to pull all the white to a middle gray so it would stop fighting with the colors.  As I did this, the colors began to take on more importance and a linear pattern of larger shapes emerged. 

Day 5 was the day it quieted down to just the right volume.  There is still a broad range of color, line, and depth… but the piece feels pulled together.  The layered grid structure elicits an array of familiar symbols for people: a circuit board, stained glassed, architecture, and urban skylines, to name a few.  For me, however, it was personal and cathartic, my 2016 Election Day piece.  I call it “Crossing Party Lines” and it’s 36x36”, acrylic on canvas.