It is October 2026 and it has been about a year since I added a collection to my website. Truth be told, it has been such a busy year that I have not worked on a collection per se. Just random pieces here and there. I also moved house and do not currently have a dedicated space that can accommodate a daily painting practice. I am working at a small computer desk, the same desk that holds my computer. So painting with all the supplies and materials I need laid out is not exactly easy in a cramped space.
Regardless, I’ve painted since I was young in all sorts of spaces and as you might imagine, I’ve always used paint. I would generally call myself “a painter,” without ever thinking about it too much. Saying that is true and accurate.
However, my style tends to veer pretty close to illustration, including favoring strong lines and clear color segregation. These things are a function of the medium itself (acrylics) as much as my own personal sensibilities. For example, even when I use watercolors, I still favor line-and-wash techniques.
Several times over the years people have called my works “drawings,” which I can appreciate because they often do look like drawings.
Neither painting nor illustration is necessarily better or worse than the other, they are simply different outcomes that use somewhat similar processes. I have thought a bit about those differences and similarities over time, so for this project I wanted to explore that.
All of these acrylic works are small 8×10s on canvas panels. My inspiration was this photograph of Zinnias in the garden:
And here are the results:
This was fun. As you can see, they range from as illustratorly to as painterly as I get. I used the colors in the original photo, plus a couple others to round things out in a way that I liked. In future years I may come back to this and take it in another direction.
You may have several favorites or you may hate them all, and that’s OK. There is no single or universal way to create or to look at art, just as there is no mandate saying that you have to update your website frequently. Shhhh.
Thank you for looking.
