Bromeliad Parade

 All of my paintings start out with an underpainting.  I have no idea at that point what the painting is going to look like. I work intuitively, and at some point the painting tells me what it wants to be.  As I look at the interplay of shapes and colors, the image becomes obvious to me as to what direction the painting will take

I primarily work in mixed media, with a combination of alcohol inks, acrylic inks, water colors, and heavier bodied acrylic paints.  The inks lend a vibrancy that is reminiscent of the natural intense pigments found in nature.  It particularly mimics the vivid hues of the blooms that follow the dormancy of winter.  The heavier rains in early spring through April creates an explosion of growth and new foliage and blooms such as those we are entreated to in the following May.

In “Bromeliad Parade”, I tried to capture this uninhibited growth of foliage and flowers. I wanted to create a painting that conveyed this eruption of tropical growth by utilizing a sense of movement through bold lines and vivid hues.