In a time of global unrest, discomfort, and hate we all need a bit of comfort and childlike whimsy. Inspired by children’s book illustrations, my paintings in this series bring silly creatures into curious spaces. They are vehicles to transport us to a time of safety and warmth inspired by artists like Beatrix Potter. As you look around each space, there are easter eggs and details to be discovered. I infuse the details with the essence of my own life experiences of studying in Middlebury, VT and Monterey, CA; my passion for tidepools, amphibians, and space; and my own experiences with love. This enables you to get lost in the painted rooms and to escape, for just a little while, in small pieces of my life. Countering the hate of the day, each piece focuses on a different type of love, as delineated by the Ancient Greeks and titled as such: “Philautia” meaning “self love,” “Philia” meaning “platonic love,” “Eros” meaning “romantic love,” and “Storge” meaning “familial love.”

 

Technically, I focus heavily on the lighting in the pieces. Strong, directional, dramatic lighting is motivated from my infatuation with the lighting in Caravaggio’s paintings. Within an unserious composition, I find something even more humorous in my serious handling of the lighting and application of paint, as a whole. My process involves a quick flash of a scene in my mind’s eye and a quick development of lore on a sketchpad. I think about the background story of the character and possible secondary subjects within the piece. After a few quick thumbnail sketches, I get impatient and begin sketching in pencil right on the final watercolor paper. I retrace the pencil outline in pen and then erase the pencil to reveal a clean outline for me to fill in with my paint. In thin layers of watercolor I build up the layers, concentrating on the heavy saturation of lighting. Sometimes, for highlights, I use white acrylic. An almost identical method is used for the ink work, in which I used a dip pen to outline my sketch and then lay in washes of ink with a brush to build up the scene.