New Work: Cloud's Reward, oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches

Exhibiting: Bill Hester Fine Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico Framed, $5250

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About this oil:

This idea arrived as a gift. After recently completing the oil Sunset: Cascading Color, oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches, I prepared cropped closeups for posting it on my website. One of those image fragments caught my eye and the next day I began a new oil from that idea.

As always, there was a lot of paint on the palette from yesterday’s session and I began with those colors. I was out for something fresh and more abstracted. I began to work over the top of an oil from years ago that I had given up on. There was a lot of texture on that older oil and covering over it required even more paint. It went on thick and since I was more interested in just blocking it in, the oil took on abstracted qualities immediately.

Once that lipstick red went in at the lower center, everything changed and the oil took on a distinctive personality and direction. The pinks at the top followed and then the golds to hold it all together. I was pushing the color and giving the painting what it needed. It was very satisfying to push all of that paint around and watch that colored atmosphere develop.

This oil will be the first of a series and a permanent reminder of the joy of discovery that day and of being an artist