I love how stories live inside paintings - they are journeys encapsulated. Each color is a response to a particular moment in the day and the picture is a compilation of moments.

This picture in particular started out as a bigger painting. I made it in Alabama looking out the large front window of my living room. I worked on it during the morning twilight hours, at dusk, and when it was raining. The air is so humid in Alabama that my motif had these soft glowing jewel - like colors. After many days of work I found the picture had still not resolved itself. I brought it out after moving to Virginia and worked in it from memory. I also did something I haven’t done much- I found some old photos of the scene and got ideas from them. Let me tell you what — I ruined it! But I taped it on the wall and a section of it started talking to me. I used masking tape and pieces of paper to block off the rest of the picture to look at just that section. The composition fell into place! It was an exciting turn of events.

The fragment that is now the whole is a picture of my husband’s potted plants sitting just outside my front window. The picture is overwhelmingly green. When I fist look at it I see mostly a rectangle of dusty green. But as I look into it the plants start particularizing themselves. I’m reminded of an artist I learned about in Italy- Victor Man. Some of his pictures are dark paintings that look like black rectangles. But then, as you look at them, your eyes adjust- like looking into a dark room. At first it’s all dark, and then slowly you can see what is in the room. His pictures are a longer read. My picture is not a dark room, but perhaps a murky green room. As your eyes adjust you may start to feel the moisture in the air during a rainy morning twilight. You may start to smell the potting soil and the rain on the concrete sidewalk and hear the occasional car drive by through the puddles and the drizzle.

Green Dusk 8.75”x15.75” Oil on Canvas mounted to birch wood panel