Parrots, oil on canvas, 2018
Nature has always captivated me; especially the phenomena of the physical world that includes animals, landscapes, and plants. My passion for animals has led me to develop this series that focuses on expressive animal portraits, including wildlife and domestic. My intention is to capture each animals’ natural beauty and personality.
The paintings include a modern design element that expresses animals in abstracted backgrounds. I create graphic layouts including stripes of bold colors. My inspiration comes from Barnett Newman’s use of stripes in his abstract paintings. I choose background colors based on the animals personality and surrounding environment.
This idea began with painting domestic animals, and it has expanded to include wildlife. My focus is to emphasize detailed and smooth brushstrokes on the animals’ eyes, and with looser and more expressive brushstrokes for the rest of the body. In my paintings I emphasize capturing the beauty of each animal with a variety of color and brushstrokes.
I create artwork with a square format to help create a modern sensibility to my compositions. In my artistic opinion, the equal sides of the square format create a tight compact design; in contrast to a rectangular format which has a feeling of extra space. The square feels more contemporary to me, and works with my intention of unifying animal portraits into a modern design format.