Color Plus More Color

Hello! I’m a resident of Missoula, Montana, by way of Tucson, Arizona.

I am self taught, and newish (2023) to this kind of painting, though I have an extensive creative background.

I’ve been a horse trainer, touring musician, band leader, songwriter, jewelry maker, furniture maker, and more recently, a clothing designer and textile artist.

I like painting on canvas and wood, mainly with acrylic, but sometimes spray paint, pastels, charcoal, and pencil. I also love making light fixtures incorporating found components and animal hides, leather, shearling, and fleece.

Color, pattern, and animals are always interesting to me. Like the way certain colors look next to each other. Or big matte fields of color with no sheen or reflection, or patterns and animals mixed together.

Right now I’m painting a lot of mammals of North America, as depicted by John J. Audubon. To me, his animal drawings are really compelling; sometimes cartoonish and obsessive in their detail.

Audubon himself was a slave-owner, a grave robber, and a falsifier of scientific results. His exhaustive cataloging of each species is in line with a colonial tag ‘em and bag ‘em mentality, but there is wonderment in there too. Regardless, the animals themselves remain magnificent, strange, and defiant.

Placing the animals over contemporary backdrops is my attempt to reconcile my love of design and interiors with my love of the natural world. But I’m not sure they can be reconciled. I think they’ll always be at odds.

These paintings take me many hours, and require a concentration and close attention that can be very immersive. Occasionally I’ll find myself almost moved to tears, overcome by a sort of worshipful tenderness for the animal I’m painting. It can feel like building an entire life-form hair by hair, whisker by whisker.

Oh and after doing a few of the tight, close animal paintings, I like to do some loose abstract pieces, or make a lamp. Just to un-kink my brain.

I once heard Joni Mitchell describe moving from one type of art to another as ‘crop rotation’. That sounds about right.