Painting Surfaces

I am in the process of stretching and preparing a new canvas. I am planning on using it for a portrait of my son who will be finishing basic training at Fort Benning, GA this week. I generally use stretched canvas or wood panel for oil paintings. The canvas works better for brush work, but I prefer wood panels for thick, impasto paintings - especially when using painting knives. I generally prepare the surface with acrylic gesso, and I am very fussy about the application. Paintings executed on a surface that has been prepared properly should last hundreds of years.

Mythology in Artwork

A subject area that has always interested me in art is mythology. Several of my paintings relate to myths, either present or past. This painting relates to the story of Echo and Narcissus. It has an updated story board composition rather than the typical pastoral scenes of the 17th century painters. I have also used the golden mean as a compositional device to illustrate the myth that such mathematical excersizes were used extensively by artists.

Attic Space

This is a sample of a recent paining. It is oil on stretched canvas. Most of my work is in oil, although I do occaisonally work in pen and ink, or colored pencil. I dabble a little in abstract images, but most of my work is representational.

I am going to begin a series of abstracted shapes in various colored fabrics. The idea is to do a detailed representational work of an ambigous subject. Color, value, and texture will be the dominant features of the artwork.