Night Gathering Painting

This piece is one of a series of works that start with a gestural abstraction based loosely on the nature surrounding me in my rural studio in Upstate New York. I then add a layer of flatly painted orb-like shapes, and each one in this series has surprised me by taking on a life of it's own. In this case, the orbs seemed to 'fall' towards the lower two thirds of the painting, crowding each other and in some cases overlapping. The choices I make for each color and value are an exciting formal challenge for me, but I am surprised every time by the character and mood the orbs seem to want to take on, almost as if they were living creatures.