Write on

This is when the second stage begins, for before the framing I had the foresight to take a picture, one that can be digitized. With the computer I digitally “evolve” the work through painting, lighting, texturing, and compositing, which through all these manipulations retains the warmth of hand-rendering.

With a formal background in medical illustration I produce fine art, and it typically undergoes two stages. First comes an original painted in pastel, pastel dust, or watercolor on canvas or paper. In these originals I have incorporated and extended techniques from my training in medical illustration. But after the frame is on, inevitably I begin to wax critical. Why did I do this, and why not that?

This process is never cut and dried. On the contrary, it is dependent on the subject and my mental picture of where I want to go, a picture that differs in clarity and substance and may be discarded multiple times in favor of new, equally inchoate directions. Left-brainers may roll their eyes, but what this means is “feeling my way through” a piece. Far from simple drifting, it is an arduous process, with many stops and redirects. I won’t know that it’s done until I know it is—and even that knowledge may be transitory.

Once the virtual piece has evolved to a stopping point, I send it to a laboratory where a giclée printer “paints” the new work onto archival-quality canvas or acid-free paper.

Something like luck or good fortune can enter into the artistic process. It is those times, unscheduled and welcome and all too brief, when time goes away, self is suspended, and the out-of-body or the right brain or something intangible “takes over”, subliminally lighting the way to a new and unexpected place.

This is what keeps artists going. It leaves our hearts, as Milton said, “jocund and sublime”.


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