Collisions

Many times as I finish a painting after months of layering and doting upon it, I feel like it is just the beginning of exploring a visual concept. In the past I may have revisited a similar idea, but it was more subconscious or more by happenstance. I had yet to try to do many paintings under one main concept. This is why I decided to paint a whole series where I could iterate many visual ideas on one concept. 

“Collisions” started out as a vision where there was a lot of brightness coming down and colliding with forms and color. I write about it in the artist statement:

 "The vision kept coming to me, kept slipping away, kept changing. It is of light coming down and crashing like a glowing wave, like a graceful slide. The glow of hope, blur and clarity dancing the dance of eternity. I kept reaching for it and it kept slipping through my fingers. 

I decided to paint it over and over because it moves like clouds. It is never static. It is some kind of Divine dance between clarity and obscurity; between logic and nonsense, between knowing and wondering. 

There is a line drawn like a horizon but it is not. It is a line between the dualities that sway inside us. The dream and reality that mixes up and makes us human. The collision that affirms that we are alive! I will keep painting it for as long as it keeps tapping my shoulder.”

Many of them resembled a landscape because of the tie in to the horizon line splitting the space. It may have ended up looking like a landscape, or seascape, but, interestingly, that is not where it started from. In some ways I feel that it is a psychological imprint of something in real life. Much of what I do while exploring with painting is just that…discovering what can come out of starting with the essence. 

I used sheets of 12x16” 140 lb. Cold Pressed Arches Oil paper to lay out a couple dozen variations of “Collisions”. This is the first time I used oil paper, and I am really pleased with how it accepted my paint. It was not too thirsty and not too repellant. It was smooth and extremely durable as I noticed when I would occasionally scumble the paint, or really rub it agressively. I usually worked on 3 or 4 paintings at a time since it is oil paint and requires drying time between layers. I really enjoyed being able to bring them along in their journey within a similar time frame and a similar palette. I ended up using a lot of yellow to be able to show light refracting on form. 

Looking back on them as a unit, it is really fascinating to see how many variations one main idea can have. I really love working in series and being able to get many ideas on one concept out at once!

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I also have all 22 paintings in a portfolio on Behance