The Seed Gatherers 28" x 18", oil on canvas, 2020 This painting was a commission by a woman who'd bought one of my bird paintings years ago and wanted a "companion piece" of sorts for her husband's birthday in early January. We discussed something bird-themed but not necessarily similar, since it wouldn't be hanging in the same room as the other. She told me he was fascinated by a blue jay that comes by their house so I mentioned that I had been photographing and recording video of the blue jays that gather to feed on the sunflower seeds in our flower bed each fall and that I had some really good footage this year. She liked that idea and I started sifting through my images, finding a moment in a video when four blue jays were on the flowers at the same time. I took a screen grab and moved a couple of birds so they would fit a composition in this vertical orientation and canvas size (made to order!). The treatment of the sunflowers was heavily inspired
The Red Balloon 28" x 18", oil on wood panel, 2020 This painting is the first of several paintings I have planned that features my friend, Kimberley , doing double duty, representing one's struggle with oneself (since we tend to be our own worst enemy). I shot a lot of reference of her in multiple poses, knowing I'd be able to composite them in Photoshop later. While I had Kimberley wear a different top for each persona in this one, I didn't want to have three legs visible with the same-coloured pants so I painted jeans on the foreground figure. I think the red and blue is a great, rich combination that really pops, leaving the rear "twin" in ghostly pale colours. My original idea for the background was a very dark, mysterious forest, but the more I looked at it while painting the figures against the roughed-in dark-ish background (over which I would have painted the suggestion of a forest), the more I liked the starkness of that, so I made it definitive