How does a painting begin? Usually with the desire to dwell in a certain color for a while, then another color calls, and another. For this reason, I think of myself as a colorist first, although I love line nearly as much. Then there's texture, form, rhythm, and that sticky matter of "the whole". I love how one mark leads to another and then another and how the relationships among the marks grow exponentially complex and multidimensional--intellectual beauty and scintillating rhythms, all that lost-and-foundness. I'd say painting was heady stuff, but, of course, it's body stuff as well.
My training as a painter began in high school. I was lucky enough to have attended large high schools with art departments and by the time I left, I'd been introduced to a wide variety of media, numerous concepts and techniques, and had foundational skills. In night school, as an undergrad, I studied drawing and painting first in community college then, through adult ed classes at The Corcoran in Washington, D. C. I have a B.A. from Goddard College, and M.A. and a Ph.D. from Brandeis, and for many years taught at Eastern Connecticut State University and in the MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine. More recently I’ve taken classes at the Lyme Art Association in Old Lyme, Connecticut, and at The New Britain Museum of American Art.
A NOTE ABOUT VIEWING THE NEXT TWO ALBUM PAGES: You'll need Adobe Flashplayer, and depending on your browser and your computer, the first time each image loads may take up to 10 second. A second run-through ought to be instantaneous. Since my paintings are highly-detailed and textured, I have used high-resolution images. A note about that texture: it's visual, not tactile. I sand all my surfaces smooth and seal them in clear acrylic polymer.
Thank you for being patient and for viewing my work.
Gray