Furry and feathery creatures are fascinating to me currently. I love to explore representing them in fun ways and using a simplified “folk art” style.
I enjoy adding patterns and colors to the artwork that gives the painting a vibrant energy.
Building layers and developing what I see there
These are painted using an intuitive method – freeing creativity from the critical mind and going where creativity takes me.
Intuitive painting is free and random, and produces works that include messy, beautiful, swathes of color, wild and free imagery as well as carefully constructed, meaningful/meaningless, pretty, quick and rough, childlike or incredibly sophisticated.
These example paintings were begun by creating a random background, and then determining what shapes or images are contained. Sometimes the negative space is then painted with a solid color (more or less) to create a foreground figure.
I have been inspired by the bears in my area of New Jersey and Pennsylvania as well as the chickens on the existing farmland in Mercer and Hunterdon counties in New Jersey.
Anxious Bear, Cats and Chickens
In the example of the bear, he was painted over the patterned background. Again, the stylized “folk art” style brought him to life.
