I just finished this painting, and I couldn’t be happier about it.

For work this size, I prefer to work in acrylic paint, using a combination of glazing and scumbling techniques to achieve a luminosity, a richness, and a visual depth that cannot be achieved in any other way. These are techniques that involve laying down multiple thin, translucent layers of paint, and letting them dry in-between.

Painting is a bit like driving. You don’t realize it while you’re doing it, but you are making dozens of micro-decisions every second. With enough practice, the hope is that it becomes more automatic and intuitive.

This painting has taken me years to complete. Life happens. There are bills to be paid, day jobs to be done, relationships to be maintained, friends to be visited, ice to be skated upon, chores to be done, meals to be cooked, trips to be taken, art to be experienced, and self-care to be administered.

But for some reason this painting has been calling me to work on it with greater urgency this summer. Perhaps it’s my “Second Saturn Return”—the stage of life I’m entering, where some part of me viscerally realizes that I’m in the home stretch; that life is drawing shorter, and these paintings are not going to paint themselves. If I want to make a significant body of work, I can no longer afford to be lazy, nor can I let laundry be my excuse.

Onward to the next painting…

Click or tap on a thumbnail image below to enlarge it. Advance through the slides by using your keyboard’s left and right arrow keys (or by swiping left or right, if on a touchscreen device). To exit the slideshow, click or tap the “x” icon in the upper right corner of a slide (or press your keyboard’s “esc” key).