After working on the St. Therese sculpture for a year, it was time to start thinking about painting again. I realized, however, that my enthusiasm for Realism was gone. I thought that maybe I would try painting what I saw with my eyes closed, rather than open. After 30 years of painting what I saw, I couldn’t put down what I was imagining. I finally decided that I needed something to look at to break the ice.

I created a small sculpture from wire, lights, sheer metallic fabric, and projections,

It had all the elements that I wanted, color relationships, overlapping shapes, some transparency, solid areas, and an overall sense of a unique space.

I made the first painting of the new series, directly from that small sculpture. After that I began experimenting and the series gradually changed, but I was still working with special compositions and color relationships.

I eventually started incorporating some bits and pieces of realism and layering with various other things like line drawings. They became almost like collages but were composed with paint alone.