August 25, 2026

I’ve been lucky enough to travel for some art shows lately, and I’m always taking photos and sketches of the places I go. I find myself focusing on streets: city streets, small-town streets, seaside streets. They’re full of color and life, they can give joy or familiarity or the thrill of something unexplored. I paint best when I have an emotional relationship with the subject, and the idea of place, and home, whatever it means, has always been compelling.

I can build streets on my canvas with thick impasto and physical marks. I can take shapes, angles, light, the busyness or the quiet, and turn it into the feeling of being somewhere that means something. Recognizable, but obscured, more like memory than illustration. It’s fun to try to capture that in the studio.

This photo is from Balboa Island in Newport Beach, and I’m using it as my current inspiration!

June 20, 2026

It’s fun to decide what to sketch — some of my recent subjects have been the Rodin sculptures at the Stanford Cantor Arts Center, boats at the Coyote Point Marina, and a giant swarm of bees on the stucco of a neighbor’s house. I use a fine line pen, so no erasing, and I’m trying to make it a regular part of my practice.

I see shape and shadow instead of single objects. I see lines and angles and light that put together, turn into form. The sketches themselves aren’t really the point: they’re teaching me to look at the world as marks to be made on a page. And to practice those marks until the observable becomes something recognizable. To go back to a recent theme: chicken and egg!

April 13, 2026

There’s something obstinately unprofound about a chicken, and that makes them fun to paint. They’re slightly ridiculous in a way that’s not unserious, but which rewards a more playful, laissez-faire practice. Things I love about painting with acrylics: messy chaos, unexpected palettes, texture… I find all of these resurfacing when painting chickens in watercolor. It feels whimsical and delightful, I like both the results and the way I joyfully respond to the work. I want to stay in this space for a while, so: chickens!

March 5, 2026

I find myself wrestling - somewhat literally - with watercolor, and - somewhat surprisingly for my usual amount of patience with difficult things - enjoying it. It’s a big change in medium for me. I’m used to acrylics, which are forgiving, bold, messy, and something that lets me paint and repaint and scrape back and tweak and change until I’m done.

Watercolor lets me do none of those things. It needs me to know what I’m doing. It needs planning, pre-sketching, thinking about light and working with the white of the paper. It’s hard to correct. It requires restraint, delicacy, and gentleness.

I am none of those things! And so we struggle together, watercolor and I, to see what we can make.

This piece is painted from memory and inspired by one of my favorite places close to Santa Cruz, CA.