ACRYLIC ON CANVAS • 30″ x 24″
Not for sale

Here’s a throwback of a painting I’d felt was not quite done at the time and finished years later. I recently brought it out for a show so here’s a little backstory about it.

I started this one in college as an figure painting exploration with a particular focus on hands and feet. At the time it only had the frontmost two feet in it which ended up looking strange. It seemed like there was one giant thing? creature? looming above it.

At some point after moving I’d left it out on my drafting table. Something about leaving it off to the side to just see on occasion helped me realize one day that I just needed more in the background. I filled in a bunch of additional feet and it finally felt balanced. It was a little odd to work on something after so long, but why not? I was much happier with the result.

I ended up carrying through parts of this style to other work without really thinking about it. The mix of detailed backgrounds with drawn elements came up in the Chinese folktales re-paints of scroll calendars. It’s been easier to spot these things in hindsight than to explicitly plan for them.