Code Series

The eight paintings below were completed four years ago. Originally I began with the orange piece. It included some colors I liked at the time. However, I had a lot of trouble deciding how to complete the piece. I soon began work on three others with similar colors schemes. For each one I kept an overall dominant color.

The triangles were just too harsh a shape for me. So, I added small dots over the triangles to soften the pieces. The purple and blue ones came first and then the red one. I finished the orange one last.

Since the four worked, I decided I needed to do four more. I had been asked to put work in a lobby of an office building and these pieces were the ones I intended to place there. Although I completed the other four during the summer of 2002, the use of the lobby space fell through.

Code Blue

acrylic on canvas, 22" x 28"

Code Green

acrylic on canvas, 22" x 28"

Code Lime

acrylic on canvas, 22" x 28"

Code Yellow

acrylic on canvas, 22" x 28"

Code Orange

acrylic on canvas, 22" x 28"

Code Red

This won second place in an art show competition.


acrylic on canvas, 22" x 28"

Code Pink

This won first place in an art show competition.


acrylic on canvas, 22" x 28"

Masks in Blue

The three paintings were painted in 1994. I thought the dots would work well as sequins on Mardi Gras masks. These are not my favorite pieces, but I'm including them to show that dots kept creeping up in my work at various points over the years.

It wasn't until 2002 that I made a large grouping of dot pieces.

FIve Masks in Blue

acrylic on canvas, 16" x 20"

Eight Masks in Blue

acrylic on canvas, 16" x 20"

Nine Masks in Blue

acrylic on canvas, 16" x 20"

Picnic

This was a project from my Painting I class at Mississippi State. We were instructed to use dots of pure color and place complementary colors adjacent to each other. We were using the Seurat Post-Impressionistic approach.

I had enjoyed playing with Impressionism in high school art classes. When this project came along I was thrilled. Later on this carried over into my interest in the Aboriginal technique of using dots.

I used an old photo of my grandfather and his cousin picnicking on the levee for my composition.


oil on canvas, 27.25" x 35.75"

Australian Christmas

In 1994 I was invited to be in a Christmas themed art show. We were asked to select a country and look up information on how that country celebrated Christmas.

First of all it is summer down there at Christmas. The beach is a popular place to be. There is "Caroling by Candlelight" on the beach. So, I focused on the candlelight tradition. Painting in an Aboriginal style, I used dots to capture the effect of light. This is a piece that sold.


acrylic on canvas, 12" x 16"