Keep coming back

No matter what experiments I do or how much joy I get from going out to the woods to paint en plein air, when I'm in the studio I always seem to come back to the face. Even when I'm doodling on the phone I find myself scribbling profiles and different angles of faces. So on this cold February week I find myself in the sunny studio working on this... like this new palette I've been trying in various tones of color. This is 30 x 30 acrylics.

Purple Mud Too

Decided to paint another version of the purple mud I saw out in the Croatan National Forest (Patsy Pond) in a more panoramic size...this is 18 x 36 in acrylics... Sometimes the mud is purple, sometimes blue...

Purple Mud

Out in the woods in the Croatan National Forest, I saw this gorgeous purple mud. Here's my attempt to capture it on canvas.

Another splash

This one looks like a person (on the right) walking on a windy day.... could have been me walking my dog Theo this morning... see the post below for another done in a similar manner....

Splash

Over the last couple weeks I've been experimenting with liquid acrylics on large canvases - creating interesting texture. This one is made up of four separate 3' x 3' canvases - put together it is 6 x 6 feet. I love the color and texture. Now I'm trying to decide whether to stop here and let the viewer pull out what they see hidden inside, or whether I should pull out a face or a figure that I see. The latter feels sort of like "imposing my will" on the painting - but that's often what we do as painters... anyhow I'm leaning at this point in leaving it open. There are so many different angles to do - I've been rearranging the squares to find new compositions!