Portrait Demo at Essex County Watercolor Club

Demonstrating Intuitive Painting

I've been invited by Essex County Watercolor Club to demonstrate painting figures, not an unreasonable request considering most of my exhibited work is either abstract or figurative.  The difficulty in demonstrating my method of painting figures is that I paint them intuitively, not academically.  I don't use a model when I work in the studio. I allow figure(s) to emerge from many layers of thrown and splattered paint.  The features, character, personality and narrative is never predetermined.  The figure and I are, at first, total strangers.



These large, studio paintings, either oil or watercolor, are created over a period of one to three consecutive days.  Each session lasts six to fourteen hours.  For me, the experience is thrilling.  For an observer, the experience would be dreadfully boring.  I can't imagine asking someone to watch me spend hours controlling puddles of water with an eyedropper, or to watch me watch the colors, tipping the paper this way and that..... maybe ..... or not ...... depending on how they are drying and which direction they are flowing.  Demonstrations are usually only an hour to an hour and a half in duration.  Until now, I have turned down requests to demonstrate my figurative painting.

Ladd - the man behind the camera - filming at a Blues Jam

My other method of painting figures is also intuitive.  I paint people doing what they love to do, mostly musicians and dancers.  The energy of the creative artist in action, combined with the energy of the audience, ignites my creativity in a way that nothing else does.  Every experience is a surprise, unique and invisible.  Each moment vanishes instantly.  All that remains is the energy of consecutive moments in our shared space ..... and the image of that energy expressed in ink and watercolor on my paper.

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Portrait Demo at Essex County Watercolor Club