The Green Circles

​I love to plop the negative space into an image. The color tells the viewer it’s the sky coming through the trees. The texture sits in front of the trees. 
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What you can’t see is what’s between these two planes.

Tiny House Study; 5x7” acrylic • 2023

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I’d like to reflect on this discovery I made while studying at The Art Institute of Boston nearly a decade ago. “The Green Circles” was born out of an assignment intended to encourage us art students to work larger, exploring texture, color, and the physicality that is the act of painting. Working large forces you to keep some space between yourself and the canvas, stepping back often to take in the whole scene as it unfolds, observing and deciding how the elements balance and intertwine 

​I’ve always loved working tiny, I love trinkets and all things too small to be - I live in a tiny house for crying out loud! But it is certainly quite easy to fall to overly detail-oriented methods of creating when your canvas is smaller than your easel. I often have my nose nearly pressed into the image as I dab my wee paint strokes, as if I would do anything to dive into the little world of my creation, become as much a part of the work as it is a part of me.

​Not only can this become incredibly uncomfortable for your posture, but believe it or not such small details can become rather overwhelming, and difficult to control. Letting go of some of that tight and close control was entirely the purpose of asking us to work largescale. To be one with the piece via movement, showing yourself through the quality of your mark-making. Though nothing can give an inexperienced artist blank page anxiety like a four foot white canvas.
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The Green Circles; 36x48” oil • 2014

​What started as a lazy attempt at covering a massive canvas developed into an inspiration that’s lasted the years. While I never fully fleshed out the “circles idea” beyond the two large pieces for that assignment, I did gain the experience with this piece to learn how light and its effect on color truly moves me. Nearly a decade later I look back at this green and speckled view of my backyard - the spot exactly where my tiny house now sits - and feel inspired that at a time when I was intentionally not trying, I inadvertently loosened up and found a part of myself in the paint.