New Work: Colors on the Diagonal, oil on canvas, 36 x 60 inches

Oil on canvas, 36 x 60 inches

Exhibiting: Dominique Boisjoli Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM

$8500 framed

This painting, like many of my works, went through several transformations. I started it about a year ago with a similar composition but an entirely different color palette. Eventually, I hit a creative roadblock and set it aside to focus on other projects that felt more manageable at the time.

Fast forward to a recent paint-along session I was hosting with another artist. I pulled this piece out as an example to make a teaching point. The goal? To shake things up and push the painting forward. With leftover colors from a previous session, I dove in without overthinking—just grabbed my brush and started reworking the trees in the center.

It was impulsive, even theatrical, and we had a good laugh about it. But that bold move completely shifted the direction of the painting.

Suddenly, it all clicked. The new approach simplified the composition, emphasizing three glowing bands of color while stripping away unnecessary details. It was one of those moments where taking a risk paid off in unexpected ways.

As my mentor Wolf Kahn used to say, “Sometimes you have to do violence to the picture,” and this time, that bit of creative chaos led me somewhere exciting.