Gouache 35 x 51 cm

A small secret: I gave a color challenge to a new student, to create a colorful painting using just black and three different yellow. The goals were to explore the oxymoron of ”dark yellow”, and how so very much, can be expressed with so few resources.
I always begin teaching with that yellow challenge.then I did it myself. And made a very colorful , pretty work that did not satisfy me at all.

The day after the massacre in Pittsburg, I sat in my studio, struggling to focus on work.
Towards the end of the day, I pulled out this painting. In a fit of urgency, I painted myself over the pattern, first by scrubbing dirty water, then paint. First by memory, then with a mirror.

As always, my selfies contain some brutal honesty. We all need brutal introspection, as individuals, as collectives and as ideological camps.

But what I also discovered, was a way to combine seemingly conflicting art languages that appeal to me: Ornament and Expressionism.