This is a bold and expressive abstract painting which I created in my studio in Lowell, MA in July of 2018. It is meant as a meditation on the meaning of life and our place as thinking beings in the cosmos. It is a pretty thing to look at, and I hope that it will make you pause and empty your mind of linear thought for a moment and simply exist within its world.

I started this painting by smearing heavy body acrylic paint across a sheet of raw (un-primed) canvas in wide streaks and then doodling around the streaks of paint with a Sharpie permanent marker. After the paint had partially dried I sprayed the canvas with water, which had the effect of melting the paint a little and pulling the pigments into the fibers of the canvas creating washed out gradients similar to watercolor washes.

I let all this dry and then added another layer of smeared paint, using a neutral blue-grey mixture of paint and gloss medium, providing a nice tension between the dull shiny grey and the bright matte colors in the background. Then I did some work with squirting paint out of a squeeze bottle in long thin lines of pure black and then I let the painting dry again.

Next I applied some thick streaks of fluid acrylic in carbon black and titanium white which I caused to drip down the face of the painting by draping the canvas off the edge of my work table. I enjoy this technique because while I have some control over how the drips form, there is also an element of chance. The dialog between the things we can control and those things we cannot factors heavily in my work. I like to let the paintings make themselves, simply guiding them along and adding material to them where they need it.

Much of my work also involves watching paint dry, and you may already have guessed the next step was to let the painting dry again.

The final couple of layers are done in poured paint. I mix high flow acrylic, which has a very low viscosity, into acrylic pouring medium, which starts out like a milky white syrup but dries crystal clear and glossy. I only partially mix the colors in and then I pour the mixture directly onto the canvas so that the colors come out in thin drawn out lines and swirls. I push the mixture around with a rubber wedge, opening holes and drawing it out. Then I dripped titanium white fluid acrylic into the wet medium and applied very small amounts of magenta high flow acrylic in the centers of the circles formed by the white paint. The white spreads into the medium and the magenta pushes out into little flower shapes in the white.

After letting the painting dry for a couple of days, I stretched around a 34 x 26 in set of premium gallery depth stretcher bars. If you look at the secondary images you can see that the composition continues around the sides of the painting, which is an effect I quite like. It is equipped with a hanging wire on the back and is ready to be displayed as it is; it does not require a frame.