Blog Archives
Q: What’s on the easel today?


A: Here is a preliminary charcoal drawing in preparation for my next ”Bolivianos” pastel painting. With the most recent works I have been experimenting with scale. This will be a 58” x 38” version of ”Schemer,” 2019, 26” x 20.”
Comments are welcome!
Start/Finish of “The Ancestors,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 58″ x 38″

Preliminary charcoal sketch on white drawing paper. The white bits are masking tape joining small sheets of paper together to make one that’s 60″ x 40″.

Finished and signed, lower left
Comments are welcome!
Q: Do you have any favorites among the Mexican and Guatemalan folk art figures that you depict in your work?
A: I suppose it seems that way, since I certainly paint some figures more than others. My favorite characters change, depending on what is happening in my work. My current favorites are a figure I have never painted before (the Balinese dragon above) and several Mexican and Guatemalan figures last painted years ago. All will make an appearance in a pastel painting for which I am still developing preliminary ideas (above).
Comments are welcome!
Q: How do you decide how much realism and how much imagination to put into a pastel painting?
A: I wouldn’t say “decide” is the right word because creating a painting is not strictly the result of conscious decisions. I think of my reference photograph, my preliminary sketch, and the actual folk art objects I depict as starting points. Over the months that it takes to make a pastel painting, the resulting interpretive development pushes the painting far beyond this source material. When all goes well, the original material disappears and characters that belong to the painting and nowhere else emerge.
It is a mysterious process that I am still struggling to understand. This is the best way I can describe what it feels like from the inside, as the maker.
Comments are welcome!