My work had a dramatic change for a while in the months after 9/11. Like everyone, my worldview shifted that day and this was reflected in my work. It became darker in appearance and tone, a bit more ominous in feel. A lot of this had to do, technically, with the way the pieces were painted. I was using a dark base and adding color in layers on top of this base, slowly building up my surface. Much like painting on black velvet. Normally I start with a white base and add layers of colors, taking away color as needed to achieve a desire effect. As I pulled paint off the surface, the light base would come through and give the picture plane a glowing presence. My normal technique is basically a “reductive” style whereas this new work in 2002 was “additive”.
Being untrained, these are terms I’ve adopted to sort of describe what I see as my technique. They work for me.
This new work was not nearly so optimistic in feeling as my previous work. People were a bit slower to embrace it and I wasn’t surprised at a time when our nation was still reeling. But it was a true expression of how I felt at that time and I remember my time at the easel with these pieces as being very trance-like. I would start a piece and have a hard time stopping. A virtual intoxication of color. Or maybe more of a refuge in the scenes. I don’t know.
Since the public was a bit more lukewarm to this group , which the galleries call “the dark work”, I have several of these pieces still and I am still excited when I look at them. They are rich and bold and very still in nature. They may be dark but I still think there is hope in these paintings but it’s a wary type of hope.
And in the end, hope is hope…
Redtree Times 