2021
I saw this image on a walk down the road, and started working with simplifying it right away. I left large areas with little paint and worked at reducing the image along the lines of a more abstract one with a few blocks of color. It pushed me back into a frame of mind I had long since put away, where I used to work creating color fields. As I worked I could see the idea of another image emerging for a later painting, one that was simpler and more abstract. That allowed me the freedom to put this image down as I saw it and remembered the moment. Knowing that I would return to the image, perhaps on a much larger scale, made me both happy for my future project and for this painting. Sometimes you can get confused by splitting a painting into trying to express too many things at one time, trying to capture too many parts of a moment. Simplifying that process by separating the ideas creates a better space to fully realize a more focused aspect of that image.