I’m still using fluid acrylics. The black colors are made from carbon black, the darkest of all blacks. I am building up these paintings using layers of colors. With these smaller paintings, I was able to create a triptych. In the middle ages, the triptych was an altarpiece. I painted these paintings below together, so they are collectively a triptych.

I’m focused on the interaction of color. Not just the hue itself but how the colors around the different colors affect each other. Colors can appear to shift hue when placed around other colors.

As I continued painting these, I kept adding more and more rhythms. The unity of the colors and the coming together of the shapes create the rhythmic order. It’s the rhythm of my drawing that’s underneath all the paint. The drawing is essential to this process because it will set up the rhythmic order. Within that rhythmic order comes the colors and black in the ink line.

I want to play with the lines and the color shapes because what’s happening here in these curves creates a rhythm. Curves are very important. The rhythm in the painting makes it so that it brings it more to life; life is rhythm. And rhythm is life. And when you understand that, you want to avoid making a static portrait. So the painting has to have some life to it.