"Urban Summer 21" Print

My art career spans the last nine years in Los Angeles. It's a great place to be an artist because the culture is infused with many art forms. The pieces I have here on Saatchi are from a series that I started, quite by accident, in Sept. 2016. I paint with spray acrylic on canvas, and as I was working on a painting this day I saw some colors and linear shapes that had formed on the drop-cloth, from the overspray. I was instantly excited about what I saw. The idea of where my art would go next was immediately formed. This series, titled "Urban Summer"/ "Urban Winter" is really what I was meant to do as an artist. I paint my art outdoors. My primary influence is Southern California light and color. It's bright, but subtle - intense, yet relaxing. It's really kind of a paradox. On the canvas I combine the colors in proportions to create a painting that has a balanced tonality. This is my challenge for each painting, to create an art piece that has the right amount of warm and cool tones. I put colors next to each other that create an energy and play off each other, and on the same canvas I may put colors next to each other that are similar and let them flow and bleed into each other. It all depends on how much "energy" or "mellowness" I think it needs. Black and white are usually used sparingly, as a palette "cleansing" element, and as a place to rest the eye. Especially in the case of black, it adds a depth and a boldness, a punctuation of tone, much in the way that salt brings out the flavor in food.