Champ

Acrylic, oil pastel and pencil on cradled plywood

24 x 16 in

61 x 40.6 cm

Live painted indoors during "Artist Career Day" at a local high school. Bleak, rainy winter day. Artists' tables line a dim hallway. Students thunder past us to classes and lunch; a few pause to linger on benches, fewer still idly peruse our displays. Meanwhile, in the adjacent lobby, the (apparently all female-identifying) color guard at desultory practice, dropping their flags. Feeling the energy from the students and from the building and hoping for a breath of air to lift us up.

The ongoing Super Ply series consists of black and white paintings on bare plywood. I begin with a random hand doodled abstract monotype on the bare wood, then paint with 2 small brushes and my hands. I add details with oil pastels and pencil. I usually work in silence alone in my studio, but some of these have been created live at art events and reflect the mood I sensed in the room. As a process painter, I allow each painting to develop organically so the character and context are not planned at all. Any text fragments - and the title - become clear at the end when the piece resolves itself.