Daffodils, painted for Michelle and Michael

Michael and Michelle are my awesome brother and sister-in-law. For Christmas, I decided to give them a painting of their wedding flower: daffodils.

This was super fun to make. I started impulsively, making abstract splotches of yellow, blue, and green before I had any final piece in mind. Once I had a color composition I liked, I used quick strokes of white and blue to erase as little of each yellow splotch as possible while revealing the form of a daffodil. I’m quite confident that I wouldn’t have come up with the variances in size and direction, nor in the off-the-frame flowers if I hadn’t been following previously abstract impulses. Next, I used as few strokes as I could manage to mark off the petals, and voila! the flowers were done, floating in space.

Next, I chose a grid that interacted with the flowers nicely and laid down stems, leaves, and grasses based on the grid. Then the hard part started. For a long time, I couldn’t find a color balance for the stems and background that I liked. Then, on an impulse that felt like giving up, I laid out the palette I’d chosen geometrically, with the lightest background color framing the center, the mid tone around it, and my darkest tone across two corners. I’d expected to paint over it right away, but I loved it. After some final color work, the painting was done.

I love the calm bounciness of this piece… its dignity and joy. Painted in acrylic.

Lamb, Painted for Sophia

Sophia is one of our goddaughters, and her favorite stuffed animal is Lamby. Lamby’s now super worn down with love. For Christmas, I decided to give Sophia an idealized painting of Lamby that could also be a painting of Jesus.

In the run up to making it, I’d been obsessed with Bonnard’s palettes and composition, while Sophia had fallen in love with Van Gogh’s Starry Night, so I tried to jam those influences together. I also knew that the painting had to shimmer with purples, Sophia’s favorite color.

The result is serene and delightful. Painted in acrylics.

All the Umbrellas in London, painted for Amanda

For our engagement, I gave Amanda a painting that came from listening to one of our favorite love songs (The Aspidistra Flies) while thinking about Degas’ racetrack paintings. I wondered whether I could give the forms of umbrella-toting pedestrians the same wonky, space-tilting, off-kilter yet balanced structure of those perfect, perfect horses.

That feeling of catching a random moment, and, on reflection, the recognition of incredible intention, structure, and balance.

Seemingly random, unexplained elements that start like chaos and end like inevitability.

I didn’t quite get it, but I’m really proud of the attempt, and it’s come to represent our romance in a sweet way. The longer I know it, the more it grows on me. Painted in acrylics.