nature is my studio

over the last several months i have focused my attention on drawing and a very few very small paintings, due to a change in my environment. ordinarily i prefer to paint pretty large format pictures, three to four feet in any one direction. yesterday i had a few hours free and hauled my gear to the backyard and laid a large piece of canvas on the ground and went to town. this is about three feet by four feet; not huge, but it felt so after the little eight inch pieces i've been painting lately.

it felt good to use my whole body to paint again; to walk around a canvas, to reach far across it to the other side with a long dripping brush in my hand, to kick some dirt on it, to have ants walk across it, to squeeze liberal amounts of paint onto it from the tube and then smash the paint around to mix it with the other colors. it is a process that simply can not be replicated on a small scale.

i wasn't sure what this first, large painting would look like after my self imposed hiatus. my drawing, and even my small paintings employ much more structure and representational marks than my typical large scale paintings do, and i thought that maybe this would influence what came out, but it didn't. it's not uncommon for me to start with one thing in mind and finish with something completely different. the process takes over and one mark influences the next. this painting is evidence of that.