I hesitated for a long time to experiment with abstraction. Here’s a secret: a lot of us so-called realists  believe, deep down inside, that abstraction – good abstraction  – is really hard and we lack the imagination to develop our own visual language. At least, that’s what I thought before I decided to play with it in a serious way.

But now that I’ve completed forty-two of my illumination studies, plus a half-dozen small paintings for this series, I can definitely see something emerging.

Certain shapes, colors, and feelings pop up again and again, like a recurring dream or obsessive doodle drawn over and over. And, in spite of my fear that abstraction would not feel true for me, I see many echos of my past work in them, even echos of my realistic paintings. I feel ready to explore this language more in a larger piece.

Here is my latest batch. As always, you can find these and the rest of the series in my Etsy shop.