A D A Y I N T H E S T U D I O
Today I am walking you through a virtual tour of my studio and I'm so excited about it! I want you to be able to feel just as connected to the process of this artwork as I do and I can’t wait for you to get a peek behind the scenes.
The real magic of the artwork happens layer by layer, hour by hour, in the solitude of the studio. So, come on in and peek around and see what my days look like!
My studio days start slow. I have coffee, decide on a podcast to listen to and clean my brushes before looking over my to do list for the day.
When working to create a new collection, I start by getting out as many ideas as I can. Usually, I have color palettes set aside for concepts that hit me in random moments, which allows me to constantly experiment with new colors and compositions. Laying out dozens of pieces of paper or small canvases to paint on help me bring my ideas into cohesion. As the strokes hit the paper, I look to find compositions that form and then I develop further work from the compositions that I find. Patterns start to form as I work on different variations of a similar idea. A series will usually emerge from these studies. From the series, that I create by working on variations of the same idea, I pick out my favorite pieces and paint them out on a larger scale.
Although each piece starts as something quite amorphous: strokes and swashes that may look like chaos, I see image inside the marble. I often feel as though I am playing a gentle game of tug of war between letting the paint tell me what to do and me directing it. So many surprises lie in each new creation. My job is to find them and make them shine.
Sometimes the measure of a day is not found in how much paint goes on the canvas, but how much comes off. It’s in the give and take that great things are formed. I read one time that simplicity is not just doing as little as possible, but rather throwing everything you have at the wall and then narrowing down to the purest elements. This is a huge part of my process- the push and pull of it. It’s easy to think that abstract art is so easy, but it’s not. It’s a very thoughtful practice the I have grown to love dearly over the years. Recently, I’ve started leaving a few more scrape marks and translucent layers behind as a beautiful breadcrumb trail for collectors to find and see how the art took shape.
S E E W H A T ' S N E W !
