While small adjustments are made in the large painting, work on paper continues at a quick pace. The last couple of months have seen a large number of drawings of plants and flowers. I got charged up when we trimmed our holly bushes in the backyard and I kept a few branches to work from. A number of drawings in charcoal, conte, ink, gouache and other media resulted. They have a physicality and gestural mark-making that is very different from the layering and large areas of color that predominate in the big abstract painting. Then, at Easter, a friend brought us some lilies. I did a number of pictures of the lilies as they opened and then began to decay. These are more linear, but again, gestural and physical. As I've said before, it is important to me to have a range of approaches to handling materials that can be brought to bear on any given subject. I don't want to be locked into a certain stylistic manner. If personal expression is a goal, and it certainly is for me, then I should be able to vary the effects I am able to achieve in pursuit of what is right for the image or right for the feeling I am after.
