Deronda Trail Painting

Artist Statement There is a sort of alchemical magic in the act of representational painting that never ceases to surprise me. When you’re in the zone, painting becomes a kind of mindfulness meditation on looking at the subject in front of you; soon the subject falls away and becomes a series of relationships of smaller shapes—is this shape lighter or darker than the one next to it? Is the color warmer or cooler? Does it blend into the shape next to it, or is there a sharp break? Each stroke of the brush is an answer to a compound question. Then—poof—you’re suddenly jolted awake by a presence on the canvas—a person or animal staring back at you, an inviting landscape, the varied materials in a still life. All done with a bit of colored mud embedded in oil using a bit of fur on the end of a stick. It never gets old.