Coming Home Series — Summer Days

Coming Home — Summer Days. (24" square, mixed-media on cradled wood panel)

We had our first snow in New England this week! A wonderfully ironic time to share Summer Days from my Coming Home Series. 

One of the surprising things about our house/studio fire in 2020 is the change in my perspective on earlier paintings. Summer Days is actually a painting over a mixed-media painting called New Ground that survived perfectly because of its location. It was a piece I really enjoyed, but after the fire it felt too... controlled. I wanted to paint something freer!

I decided to use it as the underlayer for a new painting, so I took dark blue and black and fluid white paint and began making loose marks over the original. Then I followed the feeling of those and added more high-contrast forms. I liked the texture of the collage and all the paint existing under the new work.

Here are a few process photos to show you what that was like, including the ugly stages!

Original "New Ground" painting

When I thought the new painting was almost done, I tested out the balance by making these black and white images (eliminating color saturation). I turned Summer Days various ways to see how it was working best. I thought all the directions were interesting!

​
​The painting shown at the top of the post and below is what I finally decided on after many turns on the wall.