Like most artists, I have a day job. Fortunately, my day job makes me a better, more practiced painter. That’s because I’m an artist in my day job as well as in the studio.

            In my day job I work as a public artist. I make large scale, realistic, figurative, trompe l’oeil paintings on the facades of buildings, highway underpasses, school walls, pedestrian bridges and even a 250 year old Chinese house. In my day job, everything I paint is a recognizable object, photo-real.    

            In order to make those paintings last for decades outdoors, I paint with a mineral coating material called KEIM that comes from Bavaria, Germany. It is not a true artist quality paint. It is a living material that undergoes a chemical transformation as I work. In my day job I do most of my work out in public where people watch me paint, ask me questions and make comments about my work. Imagine bringing your desk outside onto the sidewalk and trying to work there as people walk by, sometimes having to detour around you as your desk obstructs their progress.

            When I work in my day job, I think about budgets, work schedules, supply inventory or where I put the keys for the boom lift.

            In the studio I make abstract trompe l’oeil paintings.  I work on canvases that are small enough to fit in the back of my car. I use pure, artist quality acrylic colors and acrylic support media.  In the studio I have to continually remind myself not to paint anything figurative. Figurative painting is a habit I have from my day job. In the studio I must make the paintings work without using any recognizable objects in the composition.               

            In the studio I tend to think about the following things:

                        Schematics, structure, motion that has balance,

                        Self-sufficient compositions and

                        Color so inviting that you’re tempted to dip your hands it.                                              

                        Mostly, however, I find myself thinking about:

                        Abstract trompe l’oeil as a metalanguage.

                        Abstract trompe l’oeil is a visual language that describes

                        The intuitive language of perception.

                       
In the studio, I’m working each day on becoming more fluent in abstract trompe l’oeil.