The Simple Joys

My first public show of my work and the process to getting there.

Painting a New Series

This week I got an email that really excited me. One of my favorite coffee shops has given me a slot to show some artwork for 2 months. I have never done something like this before, and I have a lot of work to do to get ready for it, but it is an excellent challenge to light a fire under me and get to work.

For this public viewing I am creating a whole new series of work. I’ve been experimenting with some surfaces, and techniques to try and nail down very a specific look that I’m going for. Think Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes) but with the added richness of oil paint glazes. I think I’m close. All of my pieces are going to be done with acrylic ink, watercolor, and oils on oil paper mounted on cradled board. There are a lot of steps, and I typically don’t enjoy the prep work, but I that’s because I tend to be impatient and I usually want to get started right away.

As go through this production process, I will likely have multiple pieces going at the same time. I’m trying to prepare as many surfaces as I can so that I am ready to lay down my first concepts to paper.

The Concept

For this series I wanted to infuse a little bit of childhood and nostalgia into my work. With that in mind I decided to title this series “The Simple Joys” here was my brief pitch for the series:

The Simple Joys: A series centered around living in the moment, enjoying the small things, and getting away from the daily noise. Each piece will be created with a nostalgic, light-hearted tone and feature personified animals to tell the story of the good, quiet, and simple joys of life.

I plan to have a lot of expressive ink work, playful water color background, and rich oil layers to really bring each piece to life. This series will allow me to work in my top 3 mediums in each piece which I’ve been trying to figure out how to do for a while now.

I’ll be sharing the progress over here on Substack and Youtube.

Before I sign off, what do you think of when you think of “simple joys”? Leave a comment of some of your favorite ways to get away from the noise.