After almost a year of focusing on the contrast and balance of black and white, I felt compelled to return to color. Only now I’m working with the scale of the charcoals. It’s hard to tell from a photograph, but Cardinalis, above, is 18x18” and marks a return to canvas, which I haven’t painted on in decades. Luckily I had save all my large, soft brushes from way back then when I was doing complex oils that were often quite big. I still have slides of that work but not the technology to digitize them now, although I do have this shot Bold As Love, below, from that period. What it has in common with more current work is my use of gold paint as a base or background. It was inspired by a display of dinosaur eggs at The Natural History Museum I saw at the time. Wait. Dinosaur eggs, right, so birds may have been a passion of mine back then as well.

Also this week, I did another study for the kids workshop I’m doing later this summer that I mentioned last week. I have a few more ideas I’m excited about and I’m happy with how this Bluejay turned out. It’s rice paper, colored tissue paper and charcoal on cardboard, and perhaps too messy for a pristine gallery so I may need to streamline the process since my other ideas are even messier. In the meantime, I started a new painting this morning with a metallic gold background on a 12x12” wood panel of an Emu, which is clearly a dinosaur and could be thought of as a full circle moment.

The opening at the Ali Gray Gallery went well enough for the show to be extended an extra week, and I have some good news I can’t talk about yet, but Facebook keeps reminding me of my trips to Newcastle in May of both 2024 and 2025. The pictures from those trips make me a little sad since I was supposed to be moving there this week. At least that was the plan until current political and financial circumstances got in the way. I’m not starving and my bills are paid, but airplane tickets right now are out of the question. I do see Paul online everyday, and making art helps. It has always helped. Some of my best work was done under duress - those dinosaur eggs? I was miserable back then and they came out great. OK, on with the day.