Time seems to slip away these days. I’ve been focusing much more on work these days and haven’t spent much time at all painting. Discovering meaningful subjects to inspire shouldn’t be so hard–especially with all that is going on in the world and in America. Gone are the days of angst and frustration, they have all been replaced with hopeful idealism and quite frankly disbelief.

When I first started painting in the 80s it was easy to vent through paint. My earlier style with its dark lines, bright colors and representational human forms made it much easier to create complex visual dialogues that could be deciphered through careful observation. The more I studied abstraction the more I strayed from the human form. I began to rely on nature, mathematics, and discourses in color and shape. Recently that has followed a natural progression to full abstraction and even action painting. It has become hard for me to tell a story. In an essence I have painted myself into a corner 🙂

That is the funny thing about creativity, it requires a certain aspect of fun balanced with thoughtfulness. While my current work was exciting and spontaneous, without a story it has left me unfulfilled. Those who know me understand how important storytelling is to me. I am a lifelong storyteller. And that has become the rub. I want to tell a story but to do that I feel I have to go back to my roots. Reintroduce more figures. In some ways that complicates my yearning for artistic style progression. I fear going backwards might be perceived as failure or creative laziness 😦

But on the other hand, returning to explore figures should bring back the storytelling. In reality I have learned a lot about color, textures, techniques that I feel will benefit my future work. My hope is that I will have some new pieces by the start of next year for everyone to view. Thanks for subscribing to my blog. My goal is to begin adding more insights and stories in the future.