Somehow I screwed up my hip and back so bad at the gym I haven`t been able to stand without a lot of pain. I stand to paint. So, I`ve had some free time. I was looking through old sketchbooks and remembering the paintings that came from those drawings. That was usually their purpose. I`m competent at it, I love looking at them, but I don`t much like doing them. I would carry around the smallest little sketchbooks I could find, then do tiny little compositions with enough information to build a painting with. On principle I would not use a photograph.
That was then. Now I find it far more useful to enjoy an environment while taking photos. I pay much more attention to my own reactions. What stimulates pleasure? Why? How could I translate that into paint? I`ll still have a sketchbook but it`s used now more for notes and for minimal drawings meant to be scaffolds of sorts for later paintings. When I download the camera, I`ll look all through the image and spot sections that have potential as a reference. The cameras are so good now, just mere fragments of an image will have a whole lot of content.
These drawings were done in Laurelhurst Park in SE Portland, near where I lived in the mid 90s. It was nature I could walk to and I spent a lot of time there.
Available Work [updated 8/12]
