A Peek Into My Studio

How I'm spending my summer

 

If you wonder why I've slacked off on the blogging, this is why: I'm getting ready for a solo show, Chromatic Geometries, at Arden Gallery in Boston. If you've followed my work, you know that I've been involved with the diamond shape for a couple years. In this new body of work, I started by fracturing the diamond into a planar crystalline structure, which you can make out in the four diamonds on the right wall in the panorama above. You may see the shapes as triangles, but I'm thinking of them as segmented diamonds. Tomato, tomahto.

 

Here's a peek with commentary:

 

Nothing is titled yet, but the two-tone red painting above, with its strong horizontal, inspired more bilateral color. I also wondered what would happened if I placed the same horizontal into a square, retaining the diamond-patterned surface and triangular segments.

The answer so far:

 

I hadn't intended to make so many small paintings, but as one palette leads to the next, a series is born. In the paintings in progress, foreground above and detail below, you can see the patterned field I've laid down

On the opposite wall are four finished diamonds and two squares in progress. I'm painting in encaustic, whose fluidity runs counter to the preciseness of hard-edge geometry. I love the duality and the challenge of making it work. These square paintings in progress are 24 x 24 inches; the two larger diamonds are 28 inches point to point

 

 

In the sketches I establish chromatic relationships

 

This panorama makes the studio look much large than it is, but you can see what's going on. There's no easel, as I work flat on a work table. Out of view: several larger works, squares and diamonds taped and ready for painting this week.

 

That's it for now. I'm going back into the studio.