60 x 48 inches | oil finger painting on canvas

In less than a foot of water, a koi collective peruse large round mossy rocks for nibbles, their eyes focused on the pond visitor—the viewer—you. The central fish has a smiley expression, hoping for a lucky breadcrumb to fall his way.  This piece I consider to be a particularly thick and meditative finger painting. 

Wapiti

60x84 in | oil finger painting on canvas

A powerful bull elk with enormous antlers lets out a steamy bellow at high noon. His antlers cast a sharp shadow on his back like a sundial. Tall, dew-covered grasses reflect the different colors of sunlight. Yet this is not an elk mating bugle because a red-winged blackbird and a large raven join the chorus. Surreal multi-colored orbs in the foreground make the dense forest in the distance like a night sky in miniature.  

30 x 30 inches | oil finger painting on canvas

A mess of tentacles plays in a sunspot on the bottom of the ocean floor. It’s a rare moment of relaxation for this octopus—his suckers turn peach, ochre, magenta, fuchsia in the brightness and lavender, mint, turquoise, ice green in the shadows. It could be a trick of the light or a game of illusion played by a master of mirage looking on with his meaningful, half-closed eye.

Exodus of Pisces

96 x 72 in | oil finger painting on canvas

A patchwork ocean of quilted waves and towering swells rolls off into the nighttime horizon. The cosmic brilliance of the Northern lights illuminates the sky. An androgynous sorceress in a feathered masked with long black hair and metallo-organic clothing stands astride a sentient canoe. The oar-less canoe is driven by a fire-breathing armored horse whose neck merges into the scales of the dragon boat. Two narwhals, an Arctic salmon, a young orca whale, and a sail-finned rainbow fish are chaperoned by a benevolent sea serpent. This scene transcends culture and history—it is from the future.

Ritual in Pairing

16x40 in | oil finger painting and brush painting on canvas

This pair of bowerbirds is in the middle of a romantic meeting. The way their portraits face each other is reminiscent of a matrimonial diptych. The boy bowerbird holds a blue marble in his beak—a shiny, colorful object he has collected to impress the girl. She is the audience and reviewer of his artistry, and she presents him with a penny as a gesture of falling in love and indulging in his art form. The pupils of their eyes are dilated in intense emotion and the background barely exists: they are focused only on each other.  These small portraits are hybrids of fingerpainting and fine brushwork.

Desert Urchin

72 x 60 in | oil finger painting on canvas

In the hour of the setting sun, a coyote leaps across a wall of thorn-covered succulents. Joshua trees and dusty sage grasses encircle the action. In the background, distant buttes are curtained in a hot haze. We can’t see it, but the coyote’s eyes are locked on a large jackrabbit she's spotted just outside of the frame. Her bushy tail is streaked with different colors as layers of fur intersperse with the sun's golden glow. Much like the coyote, the succulents seem to be covered in downy hairs highlighted by the special radiance. 

Batman

20 x 16 in | oil finger painting on canvas

A black and white lionhead rabbit stands spooked at attention at the edge of a grassy abutment. His feathered tufts of long hair light up in the backlit glow of blue orbs, and his ears signal tension—he’s about to scurry away. His right side is lit by a warmer light source, casting an array of peach shadows on his white fur. The intersecting color palettes imply that he is between two worlds. The orbs of light are multi-dimensional Beings helping him transition to the upper-left portal of bright blue.

Tarot

48 x 60 in | oil finger painting on canvas

A young blonde woman looking through time faces a lamp, her backlit arm resting on a wooly mid-century pillow. Her hairstyle dates her to the late 1950s or 60’s, but her eyes are looking past whatever is in front of her—her mind is not in the present. The red velvet of the chaise sofa glows in the bottom edge. The light plays in the gossamer strands of her hair.

 The model is an inspiring individual named Jean-Marie. She is the epitome of a modern Renaissance woman: bold and mystically powerful. She does readings with a pack of angel tarot cards that have brought her friends optimism and joy. By day, she’s an enchanting waitress in the Rainbow Room at the top of the Rockefeller in New York. By night, she writes songs, channels lyrics with her eyes closed, and directs her own music videos. She posed for six hours while I drew her from life in my studio. Her black cat, a perfect witch’s companion, is named Cassette. 

30 x 30 inches | oil finger painting on canvas

A tabletop, a tealight candle in a little clay pinchpot, a water glass with bouquet of sunflowers. The petals fade into the background. The candle’s feisty flame is reflected in the vase and across the tabletop. The impasto textures, the dancy wooziness of the sunflowers: this piece is a meditative homage to Vincent van Gogh, a séance summoning.

A half-seen wolf is either condensing into or evaporating out of this dimension. She sips water from a pool cradled by cacti and succulents. A glow of larger orbs concentrates in the left top corner, possibly coming from the prominently silver highlighted succulent. Night blossoms are blooming in the soft moonlight. A foggy hillside of small peaks are seen in the distant background. There is loose symmetry in both the vertical and horizontal axes—between the wolf and her reflection, between the plants from left to right. But symmetry of this kind is very unusual in nature, so the scene is stylized to be both unreal and surreal, spontaneous yet composed.

Tiger Fire

96 x 72 in | oil finger painting on canvas

Painted to be life size, a large adult female tiger flies out from the deep foliage, her attention locked on a point just out of our view. Yellow fireflies encompass the forest floor, and what might be a fire blazes in the distant background over the hill. Is this painting a tiger in a fiery pursuit of her prey? Or is this a tiger fleeing a woodland that’s going up in smoke? I leave it in the eye of the beholder, for the interpretation of the scene in fact tells a lot about the person. For me personally, “Tiger Fire” is about strength, purpose, and risk. Artistically speaking it’s like an act of visual prayer to paint a scene that reminds me to believe in myself and tackle the craft of painting with all of my will. 

The Visitor

60 x 60 in | oil finger painting on canvas

"Duma and the Deer" was the original working title. And now I'll explain why.

I have a friend in Seattle, her name is Mari Cook. She's a scientist and lives on a property where deer and bears and coyotes and cougars have all been seen. It's lush, she specializes in native plant species so rather than having a "lawn" she has seasonal wildflowers. Her pets always seem to be as magical as she is. Duma the cat passed away several years ago, but Duma was to her like Foxy is to me. Quite unexpectedly the cat Duma actually had a relationship with a young local buck. They would greet each other regularly on the pathway between the barn and the house. Mari caught this photo of them looking at each other right before touching noses and sent it to me because she was so impressed with their sweetness. I saved it for 5 years in my folder marked "painting ideas", but I only recently developed the skills to be able to paint the subject matter. 

36x46 inches | oil finger painting and knife on wood board

It is the day of the Festival of Seven Queens and a girl, dressed as the Poetess, is framed as she heads out to the procession. Around her shoulders she is wearing a leafy shawl that grew in her closet of living clothes, where plants sprout into wearable outfits. Two hundred years in the future, where she lives, cultural mergences have created new traditions and garments.

Madam Saluki

46 x 80 in | oil finger painting on canvas

In 2016, when the congestion and lack of nature in New York City started bothering me, I took myself on a trip to New Mexico to snoop around. I wanted to determine if the desert might be my next home after New York. Having never been there, and with no friends in the desert to stay with, I got online and browsed through Airbnb rentals and found a fun little vintage trailer to stay in for a few days while I explored the region. Set in Northern New Mexico near Taos, the host, Amy, had a tan colored El Camino parked out front, and when she greeted my car a horde of dogs in all shapes and sizes came to greet me. They were hyper small breeds bouncing around like yippy popcorn. Towering over all of the pups, like a weightless horse, was an unearthly Saluki. Amy welcomed me to my separate yellow trailer and invited me into her own trailer for coffee. I was captivated by her Saluki perched on the sofa. The dog stared, unwavering, in my direction with an all-knowing air. Her eyes said “I’m just in a dog body right now, but don’t be fooled, I understand everything you two are saying and I’m just undercover.”

This painting is the story of how a girl turned into a peacock! Underneath what you currently see is woman with her back to us pinning up her hair. My lovely friend Rachelle posed for the painting, but I was unable to paint her delicate fingers with my own fingers.