Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you all have had a wonderful break and that you’ve been able to relax and spend time with your loved ones. Only two weeks left in the fall 2025 semester!

My most recent painting assignment has been an exploration on the essence of painting. My peers and I were tasked with focusing on the following elements of art: color, shape, and surface. This style of painting is most often referred to as Color Field painting. This is something I have been experimenting with a lot with this semester. It has felt truly freeing to appreciate color and the quality of paint without being concerned about “literal” imagery (such as a portrait, landscape, or still life).

Color Composition

Before tackling the 40″ x 30″ canvas I was assigned for this piece, I wanted to plan color and shapes on a much smaller scale. So, I did a watercolor study about 10% of the size of the final painting. I wanted to keep it very loose and focus on allowing color to bleed.

Since I was happy with this composition, I decided to prep my canvas for the next stage. In my last blog post, I mentioned scraping gesso across the surface of my canvas using a palette knife to create some rigid textures. I chose to do the same with this piece as to tie in the “surface” element I mentioned earlier. Once the canvas was prepared, I went in with acrylic paint, using rags, an assortment of brushes, and various levels of dilution to create the final artwork.