"Van Dyke at Dusk"
Road salt crystallizing on asphalt. The sodium glow bleeding into the horizon. Acrylic underpainting, watercolor glaze, salt texture applied wet-on-wet.
The Palette
Winsor & Newton, gouache body. I grind my own pigments on Sunday mornings—cobalt blue from Lake Erie stones, burnt sienna from the clay pits beneath Warren. Watercolor is the medium of controlled surrender: you lay the wash, you guide it, but the paper decides where it pools.
Like driving in snow. Like raising a child. You set the intention, then trust the physics.
The Music
Coltrane's A Love Supreme plays while the first layer dries. The saxophone breathes the same way the pigment breathes: slow inhalation, sudden release, the note hanging in the space between.
I do not paint to capture the scene. I paint to remember the frequency at which it vibrated.
Current Works
"The Depot Silence"
4:47 AM. Diesel vapor. Breath in the cold. The moment before the engine turns over. Raw umber, Prussian blue, white space.
"Clinton River Ice"
Not the surface, but the fracture beneath. Where the water remembers liquid. Transparent layers, each thinner than a hair.
The Process
One painting per moon cycle. Rush is the enemy. The brushstroke is a sentence in a language older than speech. I listen to the paper breathe before I speak again.