Gesso, acrylic, and house paint on canvas
36 x 36 inches
From the series “Every Day’s a Birthday”
SOLD in March 2018 to a private collector in Kansas
While most of my spontaneous pieces come together very quickly, some of them develop over an extended period of time. This piece started as an abstract oil pastel that didn’t quite work for me, so I started covering it with gesso. More commonly used to prep canvas as a base, I enjoy using gesso as an alternative to art-quality white paint because of its texture and the way it interacts with other media. As I started noticing the texture of the gesso and the lines of the underlying oil pastel, I tapped into and emphasized the natural movement of the piece created by the layered media. The end result is a piece that brought to my mind the ferocious beauty of a storm at sea.
An automatic drawing that revealed itself as a self-portrait with hindsight.
SOLD in April 2017 to a private collector in Kansas
Responsive painting inspired by a live performance of Si!, a composition for tuba and live electronics composed by Karlheinz Essl; performed at Cider Gallery in Lawrence, KS on April 25, 2017 by Brett Keating and University of Kansas Prof. Bryan Kip Haaheim (North American Premiere).
This piece was one of seven spontaneously-produced paintings as I listened to Brett perform six separate electro-acoustic music compositions for trombone, euphonium and live electronics.
Here’s a video of Essl performing Si! in Innsbruck, Austria on November 29, 2015: