April 25 - May 15. A solo show highlighting the new painting, "The Willing Suspension of Disbelief", plus a selection of work from the series at R. Michelson Galleries. Reception May 10. 132 Main Street, Northampton, MA 01060 Info Great session stretching the painting.

Sometimes less is more, and that was my thought about all the pink/ alizarin crimson/ cadmium tones in this painting, "The Willing Suspension of Disbelief". The background was taking over the foreground, and I wanted more depth. The people and the narrative in my paintings should be the primary focus. Today I took a deep breath, a big brush, a glaze I created to cool down the background and started working. Glazes are tricky, you really have to complete them in one day's pass or the edges - where you start and finish - will show. Most of my work is intensely colored. I want this painting to be softer, a little more muted. But I also like the way the light and shadow plays sharply on the foreground figures. I'll let it dry for a couple of weeks, then bring it in to Michelson galleries' big tables to get it on the big stretcher I ordered. Then it will be on display in the gallery for a while before I take it back to my studio to finish painting it.

I think of spring as a time of renewal, don't you? This painting has been on my wall for quite some time. I want to take it down and start something fresh. A push to the finish during the last few weeks has almost brought it to that point. As much as I like the excitement of the rough sketch, the details make a painting come alive. Since my last post, I've put a lot of time into the clothing, the skin modeling, the birds. My next move may be to brighten the sky. It's almost ready to take down and attach it to the wood stretcher that's waiting for it. Once that's done, in the next few weeks, I'll work on the stretched canvas to finish it. And I'll start a new painting. Spring! Which here in New England is probably not until the beginning of May.

When I get to this point in a painting, it's time for me to decide where the boundaries of the finished painting will be. Since the canvas is pinned to the wall, and the size of the canvas is larger than the painting, I often paint outside the edges that were the original borders. It takes about a month for the stretcher to be handmade to my specs and shipped from California. So I have to make my best guess in advance as to the finished size and go ahead and order the stretcher. I do still have quite a ways to go. I can work on the skin of the right-hand figure while it's still on the wall, but I may need to wait until it's stretched before tackling more of the background. Meanwhile, I've started on a new digital sketch for what will have to be a very large painting. I haven't decided on the final composition. This brings together a lot of images, places and people from previous work in the series. #tents #magicrealism #beach #figurative

This painting has been fleshing itself out (seriously, I've been working on some of the flesh) and I now have a working title. It's "A Willing Suspension of Disbelief", a phrase written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge about what constitutes poetic faith. In this case, it's about how one creates a perception of reality wholly based in the imagination. This is a pretty complex project. Not just the painting itself, which has a lot of moving parts and hard-to-paint details, but making the concept work. Turning the red sky into sky-blue-pink (I love this phrase, it's one my mother used all the time) is ongoing and an education in mixing colors. The setting sun has now become a rising moon. I look forward to working on the skin of the figure on the right - she is really just an underpainting at present. I'm still not entirely certain where the edges of the painting will end - it does extend further than shown here. #tents #magicrealism #figures #seagull #bonfire #beach

The sky is still red. In order to create the sky-blue-pink I see in my head, it's important to work on everything that juxtaposes it. That way, I can work back and forth between figures, ground and sky. There are always adjustments. Do the heads emerge strongly enough from the background color? Does the sky give a feeling of infinite distance? How do I make the tents almost ethereal, blending with the sky, but still real? Lots of questions. The bonfire on the beach is coming along, but it will be much better when the sky is different. #magicrealism #sky #beach #figurative #seagull #tents #circus

I often come back to the same models when I think about a new painting. (Not the birds. I always choose new birds.) After quite some time spent manipulating images of people and places, putting them together, pulling them apart, the composition settled down. Allison and Hannah (who have never been in my paintings together before now) became my muses. This one began with a snapshot of party tents my sister took on the beach in Provincetown, MA. I loved the light, which is always incredible on the end of the Cape. I started by painting the sky a deep dark red, which I think will give it depth and luminosity once I overlay it with the lighter colors. I wanted to make the Hannah figure more like an apparition. I attended a gala with a circus theme and found her costume on a stilt-walker. Then I gave her a seagull to hold. So this was the original pencil sketch on linen tacked to the wall, before I began painting. The finished painting will be about 6 feet wide. #tents #circus #magicrealism #red #seagull #figurative

I started thinking about this painting - actually, dreaming it - last winter, in January. I didn't draw it onto canvas until almost May. Now it's July, and it's done! Since my last post, I had to make a decision about Adriana's dress. I wanted a bit of yellow, to bounce off the teal blue background. The deep shadows called for a pool of plummy purple. I also created some patterning in the cloth. The volume and expression of her hands and arms were integral to this painting. The contrast between the warmth of her flesh and the deep, cool background color created a wonderfully three-dimensional composition. I posted an interim image of this painting on Facebook. The response was amazing - and so many questions. It obviously struck a chord. All of my work is an attempt to reach someplace deep inside, to trigger a memory, a dream. The new one is 30" x 40". Sirens, on the big wall, is 84" x 72". #raven #magicrealism #girl #blue #rings

In my last post, I wrote about the raven in this painting. It's been interesting giving personality to seagulls in many of my recent pieces, but ravens turned out to be much deeper. I think of Edgar Allan Poe, one of my favorite writers when I was a teenager. (I was a dark adolescent. As my sister says, a prescient Goth.) Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, “Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven, Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore— Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!” Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.” My model Adriana, in the guise of Frida Kahlo, is adorned with rings. The raven perched on her shoulder is bearing yet another ring for the object of his affection. The rings are the intricate creations of some of the jewelry artisans who show at the Paradise City Arts Festival - my day job as Founding Director. The rings bring me back to hands, one of my favorite things to draw and paint, and the subject of a previous post.

It's time for a breather. I've been working on big projects for the past few years, paintings that can take a year to complete. The most recent was "Sirens", a six by seven foot giant. I found an empty stretched canvas, put it on my easel (I haven't used the easel for a while, everything was way too big) and began a 30" x 40" painting - small by my recent standards! The model is Adriana, the same young woman I used in the foreground of "Sirens". The inspiration came from a photograph of Frida Kahlo. The raven in this painting is a bearer of gifts. In mythology, the raven signifies magic, prophecy and good luck - and is often the bearer of messages from the gods to the mortal world. This is just the underpainting, the structure that gives it dimension. There's an enlarged detail below. I look forward to fleshing it out - literally! #figures #magicrealism #underpainting #raven