What Next?

Thursday June 19, 2008

Last night was the opening of my show at Dowling Walsh Gallery in Rockland, ME. It was overwhelming talking to so many people about my work. My cheeks are sore from so much smiling. The night went really well, and I had a great time seeing so many friends from this area, and getting to kow some of the people who follow my work. I’m totally thrilled with how the work looks in this show. It’s alot of fun seeing a large body of work hung together where the paintings can play off each other. It’s interesting to see which paintings stand out, and how certain combinations of paintings compliment each other to the point of increasing each others presence on the wall.

I feel like I spent alot of today decompressing from the opening last night and processing everything that happened. I was thinking alot about what I’ll be doing with my work as I pick up a paintbrush again. I’m already looking forward to tackling a few ideas in some paintings.

Before I get carried away with that, I still have the upcoming show in Philadelphia. This is a show with some Maine paintings, and alot of paintings from trips to Philadelphia over the past year. These paintings have been sitting in the studio for a while waiting to be let out in to the world. Some of my favorites are the small paintings I did on quiet streets in Philadelphia with late evening light. It’s a time of day when I was tired from carrying my easel around the city all day, my body’s exhausted, I’ve been standing outside moving paint around for hours, but the light, as I start walking back to my Dad’s place, is SO beautiful as the sun gets lower that I can’t resist trying to get a last painting started to catch that light. When I’ve been out painting all day, my easel is so familiar to me that all of my movements feel like second nature. I have a muscle memory of where to move the brush to catch each different pile of paint on the pallette, and I know which parts of the pallette are clean enough to mix a bright yellow-white, and where I already have a pile of a dark color mixed. It’s an interesting time to paint, mixing ehaustion with a real comfort/familiarity with materials… and mixing fading energy with the excitement of cathcing this elusive light and having it come out well. So all of these paintings are getting varnished, cleaned up and framed right now and will be heading to Philly in a few weeks. I should spend the next few days in the studio framing, but if the sun’s out I’m going to try to sneak in a quick bit of painting here and there.

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