This diptych was commissioned and inspired by the piece Sin Fronteras. I started the pieces by choosing pieces of paper from one of my old almanacs, then ripping and gluing them onto the wood panel.

This painting started off as a total experiment. It was started during my second workshop with Mark Russell in 2017. I believe I only put two layers of paint on this piece at the workshop.

This began as a leftover paint painting, which basically means I didn’t want to throw away whatever paint was left at the end of a painting session. I didn’t really have any intention of making it look like anything at this point, it was just a way to not waste paint.

As I have mentioned in some of my previous blog posts, many of the pieces I share are very small studies. The purpose of them is to hopefully create something interesting enough to eventually turn into a much larger piece.

This commission piece is of the wedding of some friends of mine. They were married in New Orleans in January of 2019. The bride’s mother and sister had asked me at the rehearsal dinner if I would be willing to make a painting after the wedding, and I agreed to!

The piece featured in this blog post is the painting on the bottom right. I am painting on Arches oil paper and was focused on doing small studies in hopes that I would get some exciting pieces that could one day be tackled as larger pieces.

This newest oil and cold wax painting was loosely inspired by the photo above that I took while on one of my visits to Mexico. I have had it in my mind to paint this, or something inspired by it since I took the photo in 2016. As you’ll see the biggest piece of inspiration was the cool blue water.

So this was my first ever attempt at painting on Arches Oil Paper. It was during my first oil and cold wax workshop and I was attempting to follow what I had been successfully doing on the wood panels with the wax, but the paper doesn’t take the oil paint in the same way that the boards do.

This piece was inspired by my desire to explore different textures. Prior to putting any paint on this piece I glued down some wrapping tissue paper to create a wrinkled texture. Then I just began putting paint down, I poured out a few colors and went to town with no real rhyme or reason behind it.