Throwback Thursday

Here is my submission for #ThrowbackThursday. It is my very first nonobjective painting from WAY BACK in '94. (I do not feel old enough to have artwork that is 20 years old!) This was the first painting I did as a Freshman at the University of Kansas, and it was a surprisingly revolutionary painting for me. Not because I think it is a terribly successful painting, but because it represented a radical change in direction for me. All through my high school years I was Mr. Realism, and I had convinced myself that I wanted to go on to a career of mind-blowing photorealism! Anyone remotely familiar with my work will easily see the irony in that adolescent aspiration. This painting opened my eyes to a style of painting I had previously looked down upon in naive arrogance. As I painted this, I discovered it was incredibly liberating to not be bound by any pictorial constraints or rules of logic and reason. I was free to simply "push paint" and enjoy the ride. While my work has continued to change and evolve over the years, as any artist's work should, this painting opened my eyes to a looseness of style I have not since departed. This 40"x50" painting, entitled "Spontaneosity," and affectionately dubbed "Big Blue" by my wife, has hung in my classroom for the past decade. It has served me well as a visual aid for the above mentioned lesson. Don't get stuck in your ways too early, you might not have yet discovered the type of art you were born to make!