I learned the hard way to begin keeping diagrams of my abstracts.

I’d lose track of the exact color I had applied as I worked on multiple paintings.

 I don’t often try to depict “real” things with my abstracts, mostly because they end up being awful. I destroyed this painting after three months of work.

 As I went along, I learned not to crush two diagrams onto a single page.

 I did a series of glyph sketches that I loved. I tried to turn them into paintings, but they were quite disappointing when painted large. One of them survived, but the rest had to go.

 This was the only glyph painting that withstood scrutiny.

I enjoy a diptych when I see them in homes and museums, so I thought I’d give it a try.

 Though I originally intended this painting to be horizontal, once it was finished, I liked it much better viewed vertically.

This was one of a handful of early paintings that I tried to “improve” a year or two after finishing them. It did not go well.

 I believed that a painting done in many layers would lend itself to rework, if necessary.

I was wrong. There is a harmony of color and intent that must be present from the beginning, at least for me.

 Unlike the others above, which started out as good paintings that I tried to make better, this one was cursed from the beginning.

I hate to give up, which is why there are so many layers on this before I destroyed it.

One rainy October day in 2018, I sat down at my desk, pulled out my watercolors, and 50 or so tiny studies dazzled out of my mind and into my hand. The sketches produced were captivating, and I wondered how they would look writ large.

The Monoliths were born, and they grew to eclipse everything else I was working on for over a year.

I made color copies of the little watercolor studies, and pasted them into my sketchbook before beginning each oil painting. Each of my paintings stretches out over 3-9 months of execution, and the studies were instrumental in keeping me focused on what I thought the finished painting should reflect upon completion.

Sometimes the color on the oil painting would shift away from the watercolor study, and that was acceptable. The important part of my painting process is manipulating the way color resonates against the other colors layered on top of it. I’m trying to create a beautiful mesh that ensnares time.

I work on eight to ten paintings at a time, cycling through them until they are done. When I finish one, I cycle in another. This gives each painting a week or two to dry between layers. It also means that I sometimes forget what I want the next layer of color to be. So I started adding notes on my diagram about my intentions for the next session.

I have over 150 individual jars of paint, and some of the color differences are quite nuanced. Naming them became of paramount importance, not only so I could tell them apart in artificial light, but because as the painting progressed I knew which series of colors needed to be applied over multiple sessions. You can see my note in the lower left about color progression.

Most of my work is 24 inches or larger. I do smaller works on occasion, but they always look a little rough to me. The photos of the small ones do let you see just how many hatch marks go into the overall mesh. Frankly, none of them photograph that well. You need to see them in person to enjoy them fully. This one is eleven inches square.