Flowers of the Rising Moon (2026)- Coming to West End Gallery in October
Lines slip easily down the accustomed grooves. The old designs are copied so glibly that we are half inclined to think them original, save for that very glibness.
–Virginia Woolf, A Letter to a Young Poet from The Death of the Moth and Other Essays (1942)
I find myself in a deep groove with my painting in recent. A groove that is exciting, comforting, and good. When I am in it, there is some sort of adrenaline-like rush of energy that has my deeply focused and nimble. When I am done each day and that energy burst fades to nothing, I am back in the land of fatigue and heavy eyes and legs. I find myself existing now in the contrast between these two states of being.
As you can imagine, being in that painting groove with its livewire energy is my preferred state of being now. Not that it hasn’t been that way for many years but the current disparity between painting and not painting is so great that it becomes even more obvious. I find myself more excited to be at work than I have in quite some time.
I used the word comforting above to describe my current groove and that comes from the work that has been emerging in preparation for my upcoming show at the West End Gallery in October. It is familiar work for me, staying close to the style and subject matter that has been a staple of my work for a long, long time. It’s like comfort food to me, something that soothes and carries with it echoes of past meals. Yet, like any meal, it is unique and filled with its own variety of flavors and contrasts.
Much as I remember a past meal but new and different in many ways.
This goes back to a piece of advice I once offered to student artists about the advantage of working in a series, of not being afraid to tread on the paths of their own past work. In the past, when I have been trying to set out on a new path within my work, much of my energy is put into composing the painting. Working in a series allows one to mov past that step more quickly as most of the decisions have been worked out in earlier works. Not all the decisions, mind you. There is always an editing process that adds and takes away, that changes ratios and perspectives slightly, that takes into account what I am seeing in the surface on which I am painting at that moment. But the editing process is always much quicker than creating a new composition, even when the editing is more involved.
This energy that was spent on new composition is now transferred to a fine tuning of the painting surface. I can spend more time and energy on application of color and stroke, line and contrasts– the things that make the painting come alive and tell its story.
The flavors that make an old recipe feel new and exciting.
As a result, I am extremely happy with the work that is being produced right now. It feels familiar by design yet still maintains a distinct and unique voice in each.
As I said, comfort food. And in this case, it feels to me like there is an added layer of richness.
Of course, that’s just my opinion. But I guess that counts in some way, doesn’t it? After all, who wants to eat a meal from a chef who doesn’t care for their own food?
Okay. I could go on and on, but I have to get cooking. I’ll leave you some exit music. This is a favorite song from a favorite group– Groovin’ from 1967 by the The Young Rascals.