“Dark Behind a Rose the Forest” is an intimate, fiery little oil painting I made for my March 2025 exhibition at Half Gallery in New York City. Painted with transparent pigments, it captures a ...
2025-07-14 11:56:54 +0000 UTC View Post
When doing an alla prima portrait sketch I would recommend working initially into a wet base layer of oil paint to create a fluid abstract design. If the base layer is wet every subsequent hue adde...
2025-07-11 13:00:12 +0000 UTC View Post
I made this self portrait (14x14in) during Covid lockdown June 2020. In light of my Helen Schjerkbeck post yesterday, I am revealing my past processes of making opaque passages of a-chromatic layer...
2025-07-09 11:39:23 +0000 UTC View Post
“Let us avoid executing so precisely and exactly, that our work closes the way instead of opening it, let us imply” H. Schjerfbeck c. 1916
During the 2020s I painted mostly portraits and ...
2025-07-08 12:15:26 +0000 UTC View Post
Raw Umber and White Grisaille on a darker neutral ground. I plan on making one pass over this substrate. My study is here to guide me but I plan to deviate from it in a few ways. 16x20 inch wood pa...
2025-06-27 13:00:14 +0000 UTC View Post
Working on a darker neutral ground helps ensure a single pass with minimal going back and retouching. I am hatching with the paint, the feeling is similar to drawing with a pencil actually. I have ...
2025-06-27 13:00:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Attached is my commencement speech from Saturday’s graduation.
The Lyme Academy of Art, Old Lyme CT.
June 21st, 2025
Good Afternoon. It’s an honor and a privilege to sp...
2025-06-25 11:17:18 +0000 UTC View Post
Starting on a lighter warm ground helps to make the transparent scratches of the paint more apparent in the ébauche pass. Also, try using a fine pointed sable brush to hatch the paint to give it a...
2025-06-19 13:00:00 +0000 UTC View PostIts a good idea to paint your ébauche on a warm lighter ground to play up the transparency of the paint. J. L. David and D. Ingres thought so too.
2025-06-17 13:00:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Back when I made mostly alla prima portrait sketches, I usually painted over some kind of sketchy grey under painting. Things haven’t changed much as my current underpainting techniques still var...
2025-06-04 23:15:52 +0000 UTC View PostAs I apply the 2nd pass overtop the ébauche, I try to “tile” it like a mosaic. The palette has to be set up just right to achieve this. Premixing gradient strings is necessary. I use sable ro...
2025-05-29 13:00:00 +0000 UTC View PostI changed this painting. These small works are meant to be ruminations of, and for, potential larger works. This means they are flexible and can change. I oil out with a makeup sponge and a mixture...
2025-05-19 13:00:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Techniques of the 1880’s collide here with a 1980’s aesthetic in this appropriation of Mike Mansfield’s music video “Private Life” with the iconic model Grace Jones. Not sure what the 2nd...
2025-05-17 13:38:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Swipe to see the process on this one. Last two images are Ingres and Delacroix’s palettes. They used gradient strings rather nicely.
2025-05-09 13:00:13 +0000 UTC View Post
Working on this underpainting currently. Raw Umber and Lead White underpainting, painted on Belgium linen that I prepared with 5 layers of golden gesso, and one final layer of golden neutral 7 acry...
2025-05-01 13:45:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Kenneth Clark, in his book The Romantic Rebellion, discusses Jean-François Millet’s early focus on erotic nudes and his subsequent shift to moral subject matter. Clark notes that during the...
2025-04-30 00:32:14 +0000 UTC View Post
Three paintings in Good Mud were made with an underpainting called a Grisaille. I glazed certain sections of the grisaille with a vibrant red orange. I could’ve only really done this with a monoc...
2025-04-28 13:00:21 +0000 UTC View PostCaption: “Anytime I start a painting, if it’s not a small (small paintings i generally free hand) I make a cartoon, a digital drawing, in the app called Procreate. I make a line drawing wit...
2025-04-14 14:00:11 +0000 UTC View Post
I built opacity very slowly on this painting “Fire Giveth, Fire Taketh”. It began with so much dark on light transparency, and hatched paint application, and up until almost one week prior to t...
2025-04-06 14:18:41 +0000 UTC View Post
Ingres: “The nude is the most difficult thing to do in painting, for you must balance between what is true and what is ideal.” // "It is essential to study the human figure, for it is the sourc...
2025-04-06 14:01:22 +0000 UTC View PostCaption:
“So anytime I begin a painting, my process is pretty standard. I begin with some kind of oil sketch, of course I have a photo reference, most times , I don’t generally just m...
2025-04-03 13:30:00 +0000 UTC View Post
…..this little painting began with orange duplicated eyes, originally I wanted it to look more detached psychologically but it ended up just signaling creepy vibes so i painted over it. The verti...
2025-03-29 01:43:33 +0000 UTC View PostCaption: “Inspired by many of the figures from William Blake‘s illustrations, “recumbent” is the keyword here, “recumbent” meaning on the ground or close to the Earth, weighted down by ...
2025-03-25 13:30:00 +0000 UTC View PostGOOD MUD – A Solo Exhibition at Half Gallery (Annex) March 26th, 2025 New York, NY
Drawing from Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés' quote, “She is the smell of good mud and the back leg of the ...
2025-03-20 13:30:00 +0000 UTC View Post
I find that when working on a square canvas a painting has a more modern look almost immediately. As you can see here, I began on a very warm ground (with my pastel marks being black and red)....
2025-03-19 16:19:21 +0000 UTC View Post
This is one of 10 paintings I made for an upcoming show entitled “Good Mud” at Half Gallery’s Annex space opening March 26th, 2025. All of these studies were made on wood panel, with the init...
2025-03-16 13:12:51 +0000 UTC View PostI have been making these stream of consciousness paintings. I called them “release valve” paintings. It’s a “request and-response” process. I receive instruction intuitively with very bas...
2025-03-03 21:28:04 +0000 UTC View Post…me painting today as i prepare this small work for an exhibition in march. And i’ve included pics of my palette and its pre-mixtures, a key part of my process. … the gel i’m using is ...
2025-02-28 19:45:00 +0000 UTC View Post
I find it interesting that Camille Paglia replaces the Dionysian with the chthonic in reference to the ancient mother. Camille is making a subtle but important distinction in her understanding of p...
2025-02-25 14:17:19 +0000 UTC View Post
“The fact is that Blake‘s visions did not come from memory. From his childhood onwards, he had been an insatiable devourer of prints, and in 1784, on the death of his father, he set up as a pri...
2025-02-23 15:07:28 +0000 UTC View Post