Over the years I have created various themed series of my works. These include works in Fantasy, Science Fiction, Astronomicals and Horror. This was not something that I had planned but occurred naturally in the course of time as I experimented with many ideas. Furthermore, they seemed an organic flow of my work, advancing from one idea to another with a particular theme.
Space Windows
Space Windows is not the first of my astronomical paintings. I have painted countless astronomical pieces over the years, whats more, I have no idea how many are out there. I often did astronomicals in order to pay my way to a convention and back. They were easy for me to paint quickly and I could sell them for low prices. I used Timothy Ferris’ book, Galaxies, for my reference material and as time went along I was able to get even better photography as new and better photos came into Nasa after Voyager. I always try to reference the most recent images I can find which includes the ones from Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope. In 2016, I started creating odd size pieces that you could hang in any direction and it would look fine. Space Windows are like portals on a spaceship where you can look out on galaxies, planets and moons. All of these are sold but I will continue to create these in the years ahead. Please come back as I will be completing a new set this year.
The Red Riding Hood Series
This series began in 2019, I had toyed with the idea for many years but I could not come up with a take on the subject that was not typical and overdone. Those attempts were often picturing the girl in a very grey forest which provided a contrast to her red cloak, if you look up red riding hood on the web, that is what you see most often. So I scraped that idea. So by accident, I started a work that had nothing to do with Red Riding Hood, it was a fall landscape. As I worked on the painting, I got more involved in the lighting, the foliage, the very old gnarly trees and the work became more extensive. I felt it was a bigger story and it needed characters in it. The painting was telling me its story, though it sounds corny. I already knew I was going to put a Raven in the piece, I had sketched him out many month prior and was waiting to find the piece I would put him in. This was it. I had also worked on the Wolf combining the head of wolf and man with a male torso and then wolf like legs. When I started to configure where he would go, he was too visible, I needed him to be in the shadows. So that is what I did, his figure is behind a tree and the only visible part of him is the projection of his shadow on the tree. The young girl is off in the distance walking the path, unaware of his presence.
The reason this worked well I feel is because it combines a beautiful and jewel like setting full of light with a dark sinister aspect. The dichotomy of the two heightened the story.
“The Raven, the Wolf and the Maiden” was followed by “The Maiden” painting that I did a year later and a smaller painting called “Into the Woods”. A year after that I completed “The Wolf”. Will there be more? Yes. I would love to do the Grandmother in her cabin and the Huntsman. I had planned on doing a coffee table book of these illustrations, that might come, who knows.
The Raven, The Wolf and the Maiden was the winner of the 2020 Chesley’s for Unpublished Color work.