Saturday, October 24th, 2020

To say that 2020 has been different is an understatement for sure!  But for me it has been a blessing in many ways.  It allowed me to spend more time with my family, helped to get some priorities straightened out and best of all truly focus on my artwork.  Back in March I had events planned every month from trade shows to speaking engagements to new shows all across the state and like many of you everything was simply erased in one fail swoop.

But where there is challenge there is also opportunity and once again I'm grateful that I was allowed to retreat to my Studio on a daily basis and explore a variety of new directions and to explore this new medium of acrylics that I had taken on just a few years ago.  Three is noting like being humbled particularly after you have been a seasoned professional for more than forty years, but the novelty of being an amateur once again holds such an air of creativity and freedom that I haven't enjoyed in many years.  Don't get me wrong, I have always loved the medium of watercolors but it had become 'wrote" to me and one that I had mastered many years ago. Taking on acrylics was equivalent to learning how to ride a unicycle.  Sure I had ridden my bicycle for a lifetime even on one wheel doing occasional wheelies, but to constantly be on one wheel, well that's exhilarating!  

That is what acrylics has been like for me.  I have gotten up more times with skinned knees, bumps, bruises and scrapes literally.  But that has been the love affair.  It's the chaos, the fear, intimidation and not knowing what's going to happen  that has taught this old fella a bunch of new tricks.  I have found new textures and atmospheres that I have never had the pleasure of capturing before.  The ability to be fluid and to caress the medium and push back of the canvas has felt as if I were playing an instrument.  It's so tactical that I literally feel as if I am part of the process like I have never been before.

Now after five years and really, just two years of pouring myself into this new craft wholeheartedly that I present to you "New Work, New Show and a New Book".  I'm quite proud of how its all has come about and it would not have come about so quickly or beautifully had I not been sequestered in the Studio this past six months.

I look forward to sharing all of it with you and hope that you will join me in the upcoming days, weeks and months as I continue to celebrate this new "transition".