Last month, for the first time ever, I revisited animals I’d met in 2014, some of whom I’d already painted. “Things change” is one lesson learned. These animals live in communities. Things are dynamic. Life happens for them too. Michael was my favorite gorilla in 2014. Belonging to the bachelor troop of three at the Houston Zoo, […]
shipped 20 paintings out of the studio. empty walls. Working on a 48×48 portrait of Sango, a beautiful lion and first-time dad I met almost a year ago at the Denver Zoo. Usually, as I get involved in a painting, I have some sense of my subject coming forward and entering the painting. If their presence is weak, […]
The timing of my visit to the Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita was just about perfect. Their six new African elephants who came over from Swaziland in March were finally all comfy with each other and with Stephanie, the resident 45-year-old, and all could share their five-acre yard together. Here are five of seven, new matriarch Stephanie […]
It all feels experimental these days. I begin each painting with the scary but exciting sensation that I have no idea what I’m doing. This is clearly not completely true, but there is a kernel of truth in it that I think is vital because that’s where play and experimentation live. Since each day’s work […]
At the start of 2015, I began meeting the animals I paint. At the Houston Zoo I fell for their apes. Their Asian elephants, bongos, and cats… At the Maryland Zoo I met African elephants. At the Denver Zoo a young Grevy’s Zebra And a brand new daddy So many to paint; so little time.
It’s more than a year since I posted last and I have been hard at work on the Animalia series. These animals have pulled me in deeper and deeper and I love it. After the debut exhibit in November at the University of Massachusetts’ Hampden Gallery, my next adventures will entail travel so that I […]
KINGDOM ANIMALIA. Where do I start with this many-threaded story? I really do not know how to paint right now. I can paint, surely. My skills have even improved with all the practice of Better Angels. Yet I say I don’t know how to paint NOW because I spent three years using only “00” […]