#500 Laundry Painting

This original watercolor is created using the process of collage. The background and the figures never actually existed together. They were placed together to make a new reality and a new moment and experience. The meaning of the image is determined by the collage process, the making of the painting and the viewer's understanding of the work. Framed, matted, hanging hardware in place. I use my background in architecture for inspiration and depth of understanding of environments. Moving to Minnesota this year, I have come to appreciate the natural environment in new, unexpected and beautiful ways. I think the impact of this experience has drawn me back to an interest in the human figure. If drawn in context, a figure can show emotion, action, movement, stillness, and describe endless narratives or imagined realities. The figure is personal and it is vulnerable. Many of my architectural paintings in the last 20 years have been very formal, in that they are about form, light, shade, shadow and space. They rarely contain figures and if they do, these are almost always abstract. I don’t aim to be photorealistic but I do aim to represent a reality. In my new paintings, the hierarchy and focal point between the environment and the figure shift. Paint is still used to explore space and its occupation through the depiction of light, color and form but there is something more vigorous and emotive with the addition of figures. The works simply depict lives intersecting with an everyday man-made world.