"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.