THE BEGINNING, 1966: During a college field trip, I came across a water spring among rocks. Back in the studio, I used a “Magic Marker” and paper to capture the essence. My instructors’ response was “Ah, finally! Now you’re really painting.”

This vitality has stayed within my ‘style’ over the years. Sometimes in landscapes. but whatever my subject it remains a type of ‘trademark’ in my style.

Next, I left landscapes and began in abstract expressionism. I began by focusing on a central image to create a type of emotional composite. Here are four solitary female images. From left to right a Madonna, Ruth, Delilah and Theotokos. Through the abstraction I realized that something figurative was now re-emerging in my work.

In another series based on the Biblical Creation account in Genesis, I painted while listening to Hayden’s oratorio “The Creation” which was playing on my little red cassette tape recorder. Here, I wanted to capture the suddenness of the appearance of light, of all kinds of light, in the midst of an unimaginable void of nothingness. Again, abstraction but still hidden, gradually emerging, was form and shape. Below you can see from left to right LIGHT! Firmaments, Animals, Earth.

Can you see the thread of my ‘style’ all from my one small remnant of my first college experience?

My next post will follow this same thread through other series.

Gay