This might sound strange, but my work is starting to please me. Looking back, all my most profound and meaningful encounters with art in museums has been with work by the abstract expressionists (Rothko and Newman) or practitioners of offshoot movements (Joan Mitchell and Louis Morris, for example). For me, these artists’ paintings are the most memorable works, even though I feel like I somehow “switch off” when I’m looking at them. It’s like I’m switching over to some other kind of intellect to appreciate them.

That’s how I feel making these abstract works. They allow me to switch off my chattering brain and use a different language. And yet, I wouldn’t call them easy to make. There is a lot of complexity to the process and (it seems) there is a stage during every piece where the whole thing might collapse and fail, or fly and be successful.

I’m comfortable enough now to work larger, but I’m finding the larger pieces to be exponentially more complicated and time-consuming to finish. This one below is 22 x 19.5 inches. I think it needs more work to integrate all the different parts.

This is only the second large piece I’ve attempted:

However, it’s a little too difficult to work on these large pieces on weekday mornings when I have limited time, so I’ve gone back to the smaller ones over the past couple of days.

This one is the first to suggest a title. “Honeybee.”

There is a definite evolution here that is fun to sit back and watch!

I wonder how they will look when I get to the end of the project?