NARRATIVE
43°33'31.2"N 70°12'18.2"W
Notes, Ramblings, and Ideas for 43°33'31.2"N 70°12'18.2"W
This is the process story behind my oil painting 43°33'31.2"N 70°12'18.2"W. It began as a return to the coast in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, where the light is so sharp and brilliant it feels almost demanding. I kept coming back, not to “capture” the place, but to understand what it does to attention.
My paintings are built from a stack of small studies. I’ll make dozens from the same area, then bring them into the studio and lay them out across the floor. From above, I start “stealing” the sections that feel charged. A collision of shapes, an edge that turns just right, a pocket of color that holds pressure. I rebuild those fragments like a mosaic, not as a copy of nature, but as a way of reassembling experience.
Mechanically, this means I’m constantly editing the surface. I scrape, carve, and re-draw into the paint. I sculpt edges. I reposition relationships. Even the shadows cast by raised forms become tools I can use on purpose, creating new values and new hinges in the composition. The goal is a surface that rewards attention at every distance: up close it is physical and alive, and from across the room it locks together as one body.
If this is the only thing you read here, this is what I want you to know: I paint as a way of slowing down and rebuilding clarity. I want the finished work to feel like standing in that place felt to me, not just what it looked like.
At the end of this post, I also share how the painting eventually found its owner, and how it took on a life beyond my studio.
Inception: Gathering Reference Materials
August 8, 2021
Exploring Cape Elizabeth, I noticed the light by the ocean—sharp and brilliant. In the many places I've traveled, light behaves differently. Sometimes it has a distinct color, like the ochre hue of Florence, Italy. Here in Cape Elizabeth, the light is brilliantly white, bringing clarity to everything in a slightly awe-inspiring way. I have to strain my vision. There is no relaxation for my eyes.
This quality of light transforms the landscape, highlighting every detail with surreal precision. The rocks, the waves, the distant horizon—all stand out with extraordinary clarity. It's as if the light strips away any ambiguity, leaving the scene in stark, vivid detail.
This yellow is incredible. It is known as Maritime Sunburst Lichen.
I love peering into these pools, surprised by the organisms’ rich colors. The greens look a little gross, but next to the reddish algae they seem even more brilliant.
It started with a feeling: standing near the ocean in Cape Elizabeth, overwhelmed by a light so clear and relentless it made the landscape feel almost unreal.
September 7, 2021 - Initial Sketch
For my underdrawing, I'm focusing mostly on large forms. This feels more like an architectural drawing than anything else. I've gathered everything I need from my reference materials on color and detail. Now I need to understand how the forms will move. This type of painting needs to be built more like a mosaic.
After using graphite for my sketch, I come back with a glazing medium and black paint to reinforce the areas of interest. In this process, I like standing over my piece from above and engaging my full shoulder to make large, gestural marks. I find that this swinging motion gives my mark making access to the full panel from top to bottom, much like how, when I’m holding a small sketchbook, I can reach the top and bottom of the page with a small lift of my wrist.
Standing over my piece, it feels good and right. I have a clear plan for how my forms will move and where I can improvise. The sky needs to behave differently from the sea, and the stones in the foreground need to behave differently from those closer to the ocean. This is a challenge I enjoy.
September 9, 2021 - Painting Begins
Sculpting what feels like the skin of my stone studies. Each form was once its own painting. I am focusing on midtones, and on building a base for the lighter tones that will come next. Once the base was established, the work became less about describing individual stones and more about engineering relationships: scale, edge logic, and the way the surface could carry light.
september 22, 2021
I return to the same place again and again, not to describe it, but to understand it. Each study is a way of testing relationships: how one form leans against another, how edges meet, how space holds between them. I’m painting the in-between things, the shifts and tensions that make a place feel alive.
I paint this way because it mirrors how my mind moves through the world. When everything feels loud, fast, and overfilled with information, building a painting from fragments helps me slow down and rebuild clarity. Laying studies out, comparing them, and piecing them together becomes a way to deconstruct experience and then reconstruct it into something I can actually stand inside of.
September 27, 2021
Mechanically, the work starts with a stack of small studies. I’ll make around a dozen from the same area, then bring them back to the studio and lay them out across the floor. From above, I “steal” sections that feel charged, an edge, a turn, a collision of shapes, and I begin to curate them the way you might arrange pieces of a mosaic. I scrape, carve, and re-draw into the surface, sculpting the composition by subtracting and rebuilding until the forms start to lock into place and the painting begins to move as one body.
September 28, 2021
I’m very happy with the progress here. I’m setting myself up with a lot of spontaneity and improvisation before bringing controlling forms into the mix.
Having an easel that adjusts to lay flat is very important. If the light hits my forms in a way that creates an unintended shape, I will lose control of the outcome.
September 29, 2021
I’m currently working in the stones and grassy areas. In my reference material, the larger rocks feel balanced, almost stacked, with lichens and greens wedged between them, wrapping around edges, and pooling on top like a living mortar. That growth becomes its own structure. I am less interested in describing each rock than I am in locating the windows the greenery creates, the negative shapes that briefly reveal the foundation stone underneath. Those in-between pockets are where the painting starts to organize itself.
As I build, the forms sometimes begin to curl, like a bent cloth lifting off a surface. That curl matters, because I am essentially manipulating and sculpting the skin of one painting so it can be transported onto another surface while keeping its integrity. Sometimes I need a color on one side of a form to sit beside a different color within that same form, so I sculpt and re-position the edge until the relationship feels inevitable.
I also pay close attention to the shadows these raised forms cast. The shadows are not accidents. They are compositional tools that create new relationships and new values. If a shadow moves across the lightest area of the painting, it immediately generates a mid-tone, and that mid-tone becomes a hinge for everything around it. Every action is an opportunity.
Today, the curl gave me a way to emphasize the light blues in the same form twice: once through the color itself, and again through the shadow it throws. It is a small shift, but it changes the whole logic of the passage. The painting starts to feel less like separate studies stitched together and more like one body, turning in light.
October 5, 2021
At this point the painting started to read as a whole, and new problems appeared. The biggest one was spatial: how to preserve a foreground without making the distance feel too loud.
The final result is starting to emerge, but I still need to develop the rest of the image and the relationships within it. I'm a bit concerned about the size of the forms at the top of the piece. Although the shapes are correct, if the forms at the top are larger than those at the bottom, it will affect the viewer’s ability to perceive a foreground.
That might be interesting, but it’s not what I’m aiming for this time.
October 6, 2021
I’m looking to build on the progress I made the other day, but I can feel what the surface is asking for next. The forms I have already created carry a sheen, a kind of light-catching clarity, and now I need a texture that can sit beside that gloss without competing with it. It has to complement the shine, not flatten it. It has to give the eye somewhere else to land.
This is where the studies become more than references. In each one, I’m testing not only what needs to be added, but how it needs to behave. I am hunting for textures I might need, and noticing the ones I should avoid or neglect. Some marks look exciting in isolation, but collapse the structure when they are asked to live next to a quieter passage. Other textures do the opposite, they hold the painting together, they create a rhythm, they let the sharper forms feel even sharper.
Up close, I want the experience of looking at this work to feel as vivid as being there in person. That is the point of the controlled variety. I want the surface to shift as you move: slick against matte, scraped edges against soft transitions, dense clusters of information against open breathing room. The painting needs to reward attention at every distance, but it still has to read as one coherent body.
October 9, 2021
I’m very excited about this progress. I get a lot of enjoyment from sitting and deliberating over my work. Before I touch the surface again, I take time to think through my objectives, define the next steps, and strategize a few possible outcomes. This kind of painting I’m developing, my painting, lets me deliberate over decisions in a way that actually suits how I think. The work is built to be paused, reconsidered, and re-entered with intention.
In a more traditional academic sense, when I sit down to paint, it is on one primed and ready surface. I continue to apply, thin, and manipulate material until a satisfactory state is achieved. Then I step away, and I can theorize how the next session will go.
But with these works, the theorizing is not something that only happens after a stopping point. It happens inside the making. Because I’m working from multiple studies, building relationships, and physically sculpting the surface into new arrangements, each session becomes a series of decisions I can weigh against one another. I can test a direction, pull back, and re-compose without losing the integrity of what I have already learned. The process is not just execution. It is planning, revision, and discovery happening in the same breath.
October 18, 2021
More Panels today. I need to flush out all of the in-between spaces.
October 20, 2021
Mission accomplished. At times, a single form can extend across subjects. A form can be a stone, but it can also be the ocean. A more obvious example is focusing on panels with a stark distinction between colors.
Today was a great day to be in the studio.
October 25, 2021
I am focusing on the unique textures and structures where the stones meet, isolating those elements. I am wary of the steps required when I move on to more fluid shapes.
October 27, 2021
Great progress made. I want to be in the grays for as long as I can.
October 30, 2021
It’s raining hard today—my favorite time of year to be in the studio. I’m creating panels that will become smaller forms in the upper part of the work. These stones should feel very far from the viewer.
November 1, 2021
Last of the grays for now. For weeks I stayed in grays to keep the structure honest. Eventually the painting asked for risk again. Color changes the rules.
November 2, 2021
Throwing caution to the wind, time for color.
November 7, 2021
November 10, 2021
There is a kind of weaving happening here. Being close to this work is overwhelming. It’s a dance of paint that isn't just a rendering of shapes floating in space but actual material. Each form has its own character.
November 19, 2021
Finally working through the greens, I wanted to establish as much of the image as possible before focusing on these forms. That way, they would have distinct character and behavior, and they could dance differently.
November 20, 2021
december 1, 2021
So much painting today, leaving the studio physically drained.
December 2, 2021
More Green.
Studio is in Factory mode. My Favorite.
December 4, 2021 - Installing Hanging Hardware
Cody is our woodworker for the studio, assisting with hanging, installing, and infrastructure. We want to ensure that our paintings are safely hung.
December 5, 2021
Thrilled with the progress made so far, my photos make the painting appear much closer to being finished than it actually is. It’s amazing how much the shadows contribute to the overall composition.
December 6, 2021 - Final Touches
By December 10th, the painting was finished.
That night, we hosted a concert in the studio for our friends’ new album release. The event happened as the weather turned cold and COVID lockdowns began tightening again, which made gathering in person feel especially rare.
Finishing, for me, isn’t a clean ending where I sit down and summarize what happened. It’s more like a switch flips and suddenly the painting is no longer “in progress” or “a problem I’m solving.” It becomes a presence in the room.
I didn’t really have time to think after the last touch. We immediately moved into the concert, and the studio filled up with sound and people and energy. But I kept circling back to the work all night, pacing, admiring it, watching it from different angles, letting it exist without my hands on it for the first time. That was the first real moment of finished: not a conclusion, but a kind of release, where the painting could finally hold its own weight and I could just witness what we had made.
Concert with Ictus Novus - December 11, 2021
Covid was a very challenging time for many. In the summer of 2021, there was a brief break in restrictions in New England. But as the weather got colder and people started getting sick again, it became difficult to find venues, and even harder to plan gatherings that felt safe.
I had done several album artworks for my friends in Ictus Novus, and I wanted to offer them a small, controlled space to rehearse and put the show together. The studio was familiar, easy to manage, and large enough for people to spread out.
Here are a few photos from the rehearsal before the show:
SOLD! Collector Interview with Rachel Wells of Headwater Wellness.
After the painting and the concert, the work took on an unexpected life before it found its new home.
In the video below, I speak with Rachel about how the painting 43°33'31.2"N 70°12'18.2"W became part of her Expressive Arts practice, and how it helped shape the way she approaches her work through Headwaters Wellness.
In this conversation, we cover:
How Rachel brings together music, art, and therapy in the structure of Headwaters Wellness
Rachel’s relationship with art
Why the painting resonated with Rachel
What Rachel hoped the painting would offer her practice and patients
What reactions and outcomes she has seen from the collaboration
How and why the painting has had an impact in Rachel’s professional and personal life, and more
For the full story on how Rachel and I met , check out the video below:
Cliffside Symphony
Notes, Ramblings, and Ideas for Cliffside Symphony: Oceans Rushing Crescendo
This publication documents the creative journey behind the painting Cliffside Symphony: Oceans Rushing Crescendo. It's a collection of thoughts, inspirations, ideas, and ramblings gathered from my journals during the process—from December 31st, 2020 to June 24th, 2021.
Inception: Gathering Reference Materials
December 31, 2020 Acadia National Park and Reflecting on the Covid-19 Pandemic
What's it like to visit Acadia National Park in winter for New Year's? Bone-chillingly cold, eerily quiet, and hauntingly empty. The ocean's vibrant hues stand in stark contrast to the jagged stones lining the shore.
At the end of 2020, Catherine and I decided to visit Acadia National Park. We struggled to find a vacation spot amidst all the madness of the year. For me, the end of the year has always been a time of reflection and contemplation. During the sudden rise of the COVID-19 pandemic, all you could do was reflect on the uncertainty and frustration that everyone experienced in their own way.
I struggled to keep my day job, which grew more challenging and emotionally draining with each month we missed our targets. At the same time, I felt pressure to support Catherine through the immigration process and keep her safe while she waited for her work permit—another source of worry and panic.
We were living with my family—hunkered down with my Mom, Dad, Grandmother, three brothers, sister, and my brother Frank's friend Masa from Japan. Masa was stranded in the US, unable to return home from their boarding school. He became a reluctant yet honorary member of the family. With Catherine and me, that made 10 people total.
The experience wasn't bad or uncomfortable—my family is good people. The constant yelling is more out of necessity because we're generally all fat (speaking for the biological Majkowski/Vitanza folk), we stomp around, talk smack, and those who aren't find other ways to stir things up. We enjoyed great, lengthy dinners together, chatting and savoring Grandma's cooking and baked goods. Since my Grandma, Mom, and Dad were all cancer survivors with varying immune system strengths, COVID-19 demanded a level of caution that many others weren't experiencing. We played lots of games, and I carved out space in our basement for a small painting studio. We all eventually got sick, but our caution ultimately paid off. We were isolated, and that wasn't so bad.
In our town, people enjoyed being outdoors and walking.
It was a pleasant area near the ocean, so we generally saw people outside, and this didn't change much. The only noticeable difference was the routes people took. Instead of gathering near the water or parks, they now explored backroads and dead-end cul-de-sacs.
We saw people who usually kept to themselves coming outside. Others rented Airbnbs to escape the city's claustrophobia. We'd spot them on their phones, walking their pets.
I pondered deeply about what these people were discovering here. The conversation always centered on escape. But then what? You're here now, you've done it. The moment of respite is upon you. What are you doing with it?
I recall taking numerous walks during this time, contemplating and people-watching from a socially responsible distance.
When alone on these walks, my mind often raced. I describe it as a swelling sensation, the mind churning, filled with small realizations of things beyond your control. When it becomes overwhelming and frustrating, you remind yourself of a random quote, a moment, or something sobering. A small voice says,
"Okay, I need to move forward.
That's a beautiful tree there.
What can I control?
What's my first step?"
Then comes a moment of clarity where I can truly see what's in front of me, the walk's beauty no longer obscured by racing thoughts.
But soon, the swelling begins anew.
So here we are in Acadia, one of the most beautiful national parks in the US, visiting during a historically quiet season and an unprecedented lull in travel. Standing atop these cliffs, huddling behind rocks to escape the harsh winds, we were mesmerized. Peering down at the stones and dry, lifeless grass, we watched as freezing white water relentlessly crashed and retreated, revealing beautiful blue and green hues. The water being so cold and clear became glass like—only to be followed by another crash and a spray of icy, salty mist.
The sound and intensity shocked us out of our thoughts for a while. Yet it reminded me of how my mind worked—that swelling of thoughts that seems to wash away just as you take a deep breath or have a revelation. It felt like this.
I've chosen a challenging path for myself. I relish overcoming hardship and tackling difficult tasks. I find myself drifting away from those who seek an easy life or let things slide by. Instead, I deeply admire resilient people—those who repeatedly leap into the fire solely for the wisdom they'll gain.
Despite the pain, frustration, and anxiety I endured during this period of my life, I'm grateful to have emerged stronger. I want to capture that sensation in paint, to remind myself of those moments of respite on these cliffs. I want to paint it as I felt it.
New Years Eve 2021: Cooking by the fire
Pan-seared scallops and flame-cooked tortellini in cast iron. We had hoped to catch a glimpse of the Northern Lights. Though they eluded us, we spent hours in hefty sleeping bags in the back of my Jeep watching and mesmerized.
April 5, 2021 - Preliminary Sketch
In this initial sketch, I'm trying to capture the sensation of looking down and forward at the same time. Even though I'm peering down a cliff, the vast expanse of water and stones appears to loom directly in front of me. This flattens the image in an interesting way.
April 14, 2021
I'm enjoying the process of discovering and emphasizing these winding roots. I want viewers' eyes to be drawn into the image by these large, root-like structures—pushed around by massive forms converging from all directions toward the center. My goal is for the entire painting to embody a tumultuous internal energy, as though it were at odds with the energy of the ocean crashing through the stones toward the viewer. The direction and architecture of my paint forms express this movement.
Painting Begins: April 19, 2021
Today, I'm focusing on the middle-toned darks. My goal is to create a vibrant, colorful base that the larger forms will later temper and balance. The process of making a painting is very important to me. Typically, when someone sets out to create a painting, they take a single surface and build layer after layer—adding and rendering with various tools, brushes, or clever tricks—until it looks like what they wanted or they reach a point of resolution.
I firmly believe that the massive changes of 2020—when our communities were huddled inside and everyone was online—fundamentally changed the human experience. This time changed how people interact, earn their livelihood, find joy, handle loss, and where they go when they need to escape.
With everything coming from everywhere all at once, I observed an existence that depended on decision-making. Fast, articulate decision-making. A desire to take everything we know, lay it on the ground, organize and categorize it, and build it back together.
The painting process I developed is meant to be exactly that experience. In these studies, I let myself freely add colors and gestures and iterate with a kind of freedom.
April 24, 2021
I believe there is freedom in deliberation. This type of painting creates a kind of luxury where I can deliberate in a way similar to an artist who makes mosaics, carving the exact piece. Except in this case, I am able to sculpt paint into these kinds of forms—forms in their sculptural sense that have their own character and can embody a kind of gesture or "mark" similar to the character found in drawing.
I created these forms by essentially stealing moments from the studies above—preserving the integrity of their surface and, in a metaphorical sense, rebuilding a view of the world. This process creates a kind of separation from reality—the process of thinking so critically and freely that one loses oneself from reality, from what is in front of them—then piece by piece rebuilds a new world. But never losing sight of the individual pieces and how they relate to themselves.
In sculpting these forms, I'm aiming to unite multiple objects from the reference material. I'm generalizing the shapes of various shadows, rather than rendering individual stones. This approach allows me to later cut in with smaller forms, achieving the desired effect.
Warmer forms come forward while cooler ones recede, theoretically creating balance and depth.
I'm concerned about softness. As objects stack in the distance, their forms should become softer and blend into the light. I need to ensure these distant forms are less defined. I'm laying out my panels and organizing my composition, strategizing on the next steps and their timing.
April 26, 2021
This is my process. This approach—with its inherent limitations—feels like thought itself. I'm taking everything I know about the world and reassembling it for myself.
Each form becomes a decision point, a moment of consideration where I can choose how to represent what I see and feel. The limitations of working with discrete forms don't constrain me—they focus me. They force me to distill complex visual information into essential shapes, to decide what matters most in each moment.
April 29, 2021
There's something deeply human about this process of disassembly and reconstruction. It mirrors how we process experience itself—breaking down the overwhelming flood of sensory input into manageable pieces, then reconstructing meaning from those fragments. The painting becomes a map of my decision-making, a record of how I chose to see and interpret the world in that particular moment.
May 1, 2021
A brief pause. I'm savoring how the natural light streams in, embracing the surface of the painting.
This method creates a dialogue between control and spontaneity. While I'm making deliberate choices about each form, the interaction between forms—how they sit next to each other, overlap, or create new relationships—often surprises me. It's in these unexpected moments that the painting comes alive, when it stops being simply a reconstruction and becomes something new entirely.
May 3, 2021
Beautiful Spring Day to be in the studio
In this session—now that I've established a solid foundation—I need to be strategic about what comes next. I want to enhance and complement the forms I've laid down, but I must be careful not to become precious about any single element at the expense of the whole.
Some forms have interesting, sometimes surprising colors. These might emerge from the history of previous paintings on this support, or because I deliberately placed them there. If I'm drawn to a particular blue, I'll seek out a red or complementary color to accentuate it. Each decision shapes the final work.
One final shot before leaving.
May 7, 2021
May 11, 2021
Just a bit of admin work today before I can get busy. This is the reality of it all. I get the opportunity to perform at a day job and stare at my work—deliberating over the panels on the ground as I pace around on the phone. In the end, we hang up the call and get busy.
May 12, 2021
May 13, 2021
I'm settling into a great rhythm with this piece. The question now is where to go next. My instinct is to start at the top—the objects farthest from the viewer. I can make these forms smaller and more directional. Working this way, I'll have a better sense of scale when I reach the objects closer to the viewer. I'm also eager to work with the blues today.
I hope the music of these studies comes through. In making them, just focusing on an individual area that excites me in my reference material and expanding on it.
May 15, 2021
May 17, 2021
May 22, 2021: Trip to Portland Museum of Art
Just imagine if each of these confident brushstrokes were tiny microcosms.
May 23, 2021
May 26, 2021
May 31, 2021
June 2, 2021
June 10, 2021
June 12, 2021 - Final Touches
Just a few notes I had scribbled down in my chair after finishing:
I paint what I see.
During quarantine, I yearned to be outside—to escape the place where I was confined. When I finally ventured out, I was overwhelmed by the intense bursts of vibrancy in everything around me.
Each time I step outside, the world feels new. This vibrant sensation of novelty fades quickly as my attention shifts. If I force myself to linger in one place, I begin to sense the writhing of my thoughts—I feel pressure.
Webster defines pressure as "continuous physical force exerted on or against an object by something in contact with it."
A whole new world is being created where people gather, and the responsibility to engage with it constantly taps me on the shoulder.
Oil paint, my sole medium, has historically been used metaphorically by those who master the art of applying it in thin layers across surfaces to precisely describe and communicate what they see and feel.
I sculpt it into forms, constructing my vision of the world.
I've experienced that glow before—the "just finished a painting" glow—and it's exhilarating. While I'm uncertain about the complete accuracy of my earlier words, they felt genuine when I wrote them. Now, I can't bring myself to alter them.
The Roar of Spring Rain
Notes, Ramblings, and Ideas for The Roar of Spring Rain
After days of heavy spring rain, the Saco River surged through the Biddeford rapids with a force that felt almost architectural. The water was loud enough to fill the space between the mills, and I couldn’t stop watching it. I knew immediately I wanted to paint that feeling, not just the scene.
This is the process story behind The Roar of Spring Rain: gathering reference at the flooded rapids, starting en plein air to capture the water’s energy, and then spending months in the studio experimenting with form, texture, and light until the painting finally held both chaos and calm at once.
Inception: Gathering Reference Materials
May 2, 2023 The Rain Stopped
Spring rain can be gentle and light, or it can pour for days. On this particular May, heavy rains and winds of 20–70 mph knocked out power for many homes and businesses, flooding roads and causing rivers to surge.
The day after, I took a walk down to the river to watch the water. I never realized how expansive and maze-like the Saco and Biddeford mills actually were. Built and developed since the 1600s, they strangely reminded me of my travels in Europe, where you're walking around city streets until suddenly you're looking at a gorgeous complex of buildings and foundations built by the Romans. As we've repurposed these buildings from water-powered sawmills and iron forges into apartments, hotels, and small businesses, these amazing places have taken on a new life.
When we finally came upon the water, it was furious. Flowing green and yellow river water crashed through, turning white in an instant as it sloshed about the rocks, stones, and equipment from an era long since past. The looming brick buildings transformed the river beneath their shadows into hues of purple and blue. There was a beauty in the hard rectangular lines of the buildings cutting over the river, as if I were looking through a blue bottle.
Beyond the color, I was mesmerized by the water, so loud and booming as it rushed through and echoed between buildings along the seemingly narrow passes. The acoustics of the place and the sheer force of the water made me feel like I was in a grand concert hall, focused on the conductor watching their every movement. My attention was locked in, and I lost myself just watching.
The composition for a painting of this place at this moment wasn't obvious. No picture could really capture the sense of what I was looking for. Sometimes a collection of photographs can work well as reference material, as reviewing them before working—along with notes or journal entries from the time, or even listening to music that was playing—can transport you back to that moment. Other times, like in this particular moment, I needed to be here. Although the blue and green water that transformed into white mists would make beautiful forms amongst the brick buildings, greenery, and broken fences, it wasn't what I was looking for. The reason I was captivated by this place was because of how mesmerizing it was to be here. Understanding the circumstances, the weather, the history—all of it contributes as narrative elements to the piece. But that's not why I'm here. I'm here because I lost myself in the aggression and force. To capture that, I needed to sit here, come back, and try to figure it out with my material onsite.
May 21, 2023 Initial Sketch en Plein Air
After waiting a few weeks for another storm just like it, I have my panel primed and ready, along with my easel and everything else I need. There's a logistical consideration when painting outside—especially the way I paint. My goal today is to bring my panel outside and take my time figuring out my composition. I want to recreate something very specific. We will make it happen today.
May 24, 2023
Back in the studio, the goal changed. The river was still the subject, but now I needed a language for it. I wasn’t trying to copy the rapids. I was trying to rebuild their energy in forms I could actually control. I'm seeking specific elements within the overall composition.
The energy I aim to capture will emerge from layering forms. I envision these forms as dancers—some positioned in the background, others closer to the foreground. My goal is to create forms with a sense of permanence, yet flexible enough to be altered, shifted, or obscured as the work progresses. While there's no predetermined "correct" placement for these forms, their presence will guide the painting's evolution. This is the moment to embrace the poetic as uninhibited.
July 2, 2023
Over the next few weeks, the painting stopped cooperating. The early momentum was real, but the composition still felt like a collection of attempts instead of a single statement. I kept making panels, testing attitudes, and throwing most of it away.
When I get stuck, I go look at something made with conviction. I needed to see scale, structure, and decision-making up close, then come back and face the surface again. We'll take a trip to Boston to see something.
July 6, 2023
David Clough visited today to photograph my completed and in-progress works. One of the biggest challenges in sharing my art is getting high-quality photographs. My works have such varied surfaces that the light cast on them misrepresents what's truly there. After discussing this with David, I wanted to capture a few shots of my process from his perspective—to demonstrate my painting technique and see it through his eyes.
David is an exceptional architectural and commercial photographer who has captured the work of many artists I admire throughout New England. It was an honor to have him in my studio today and share my process.
Even with good documentation and a clearer record of the process, I still hesitated. The problem was not effort. It was desire. I had to decide what the painting was actually allowed to be.
August 9th, 2023
Although we made excellent progress at the beginning of July, I haven't been able to sit still and work on this painting. Something is paralyzing me from making progress. Catherine and I decided to set a deadline—I would finish it by December 1.
In the meantime, we booked a dinner at Elda for our anniversary. Elda is in the Biddeford Mills, though at the time of writing this, it's closed.
I did not expect a restaurant to unlock this painting, but it did. Watching how a chef builds restraint, rhythm, and care into a meal gave me a way to think about what this work needed: clarity without losing intensity.
Fine dining is one of my secret passions and a wellspring of inspiration. When I'm stuck in my creative process—overthinking a painting's purpose or my own identity—I've found an unexpected solution: viewing challenges through the lens of a chef at a high-end restaurant. This perspective has become a powerful antidote for my creative paralysis.
By focusing on a dish's beauty, I'm drawn to its simplicity. A great dish isn't overcrowded. Its portion size is carefully considered so guests feel satisfied after a multi-course meal. Each dish undergoes an iterative creative process similar to what I experience. We conceive an idea, bring it to life, then refine it—tweaking, pushing, moving, adding, and subtracting - all in service to complete result. Then onto the next.
Success comes when everything works as a whole. In a series of dishes, one that's too distracting or different might need to be scrapped, adjusted, or refined.
Cooking well for strangers is an act of care and hospitality. Chefs meticulously prepare wonderful experiences for people they don't know and don't need to know. Painting can be deeply personal—at times so sticky with sentimentality that viewers struggle to find their place in it or a place for it in their lives. Great fine dining, however, walks a tightrope between being meaningful and considerate while remaining inclusive of the diner's experience. It manages to be both sentimental and special. When my Italian grandmother presents you with food from her culture, you're tasting something precious to her. She feels validated when you enjoy and remember it. It's humble and beautiful, reminding me not to take myself too seriously.
At Elda, they incorporate native vegetables, plants, lichens, and sea creatures from Maine's coast. The love that goes into collecting and foraging for these meals is remarkable.
As I reflect on my painting, I did not need more reference. I needed a clearer standard for what ‘finished’ should feel like. Fine dining became that standard for me here, because the best meals do something I want this painting to do: they are precise without being cold, generous without being overcrowded, and memorable without asking the guest to understand the chef’s entire inner life.
August 28, 2023
I've been staring at and sketching possible compositions, rotating the painting horizontally and vertically several times to keep my options open for either orientation.
I keep asking myself, "What do I want?" You can't control how viewers will feel when they look at your painting, but you can use visual cues and angles to guide their eye movement. If you want the eye to rest on a specific area, you can suggest that through organized compositional elements.
In this place, there's so much noise and intensity that it paradoxically creates a sense of calm. How do I make my forms dance like this? How do I capture that interplay of chaos and serenity?
What's at stake here is the material itself—the inherent cost of oil paint. Mistakes are expensive, so I need to be deliberate.
At some point the planning has to turn back into paint. I stopped trying to solve the whole image in my head and went back to the material, one relationship at a time.
September 16, 2023
After a month of studying, staring, and calculating, I found myself mesmerized by the falling water foaming outside my studio window this morning. I glanced across the room and decided to print out all my photos and references.
As I continued to watch the patterns and flow of the water, I began painting some of the wild shapes with an energetic hand. I'm searching for very subtle relationships. At this stage, I'm confident in my color choices and the relationships I've established. It's just me and the materials in these studies—exploring what they can do.
September 20, 2023
While the studies are drying to their perfect texture, I sketch a few architectural drawings before diving into painting. For me, these sketches break free from traditional light and shadow rendering rules. Instead, each dash and mark represents a form.
Essentially, I take areas of interest from my studies and steal them—the result is a sculpted form transplanted to the final surface. These forms need to be calculated and considered, kind of like a piece in a mosaic. But unlike a traditional mosaic where each tile is a carefully measured shard, these forms have character.
These drawings are the architecture of how the forms move. They help me identify the size of each form before I steal and sculpt it.
To help visualize this process, I play music by Charles Mingus—usually "Moanin'." I ask visitors to follow a particular instrument or group with their mind's eye. You'll notice a kind of weaving—sounds fading and coming forward, shifting in volume and prominence. This is how I think about my painting, how I think about the world, and how I feel in moments of being overwhelmed with life.
If just listening to or sharing Moanin was enough - perhaps I wouldn’t paint.
Considering the established work I've done since my last significant painting session, my goal today is to unify these elements into a cohesive whole. Once achieved, I can complete everything relationally.
September 21, 2023
Working with the painting under brilliant direct lighting from above creates shadows that fall on the forms. These darker values create shapes, forms, and new relationships—and I need to stay aware of them. Without this awareness, random shapes or colors can appear without my knowing it. Imagine rendering the fall of water and discovering, only after shifting the lighting, that a shadow has formed what looks like a demonic face staring back. Interesting, perhaps, but I should never be the last person to notice.
To avoid these surprises, I constantly update and refine my studies and sketches as I paint. It isn't an enormous mental exercise to maintain this awareness, but I do need to remind myself occasionally to step back and run through my checklist—systematically identifying what works and what doesn't.
Again, the hardest part of painting is deciding "what I want," and sometimes the only way you can get there is by identifying and eliminating "everything I don't."
September 22, 2023
Here's a selection of panels from today's session. I'm examining the foaminess of the water, contemplating how to capture the subtle shifts in light.
September 27, 2023
Now the work was about accumulation. Form by form, the painting started to behave like water again. Not literally, but emotionally, with pressure, churn, and release.
Painting on my birthday. Catherine picked me up for a lovely dinner. I'm thrilled with our progress so far.
October 20, 2023
Fall has truly arrived now. This is my favorite season to be in the studio, painting. From here on, progress came in quieter ways. Less invention, more calibration. The big decisions were made, and the rest was the slow work of making the whole thing believable.
October 22, 2023
I'm searching for the most captivating in-between colors at the waterfall's crest. This will create a striking contrast when I eventually paint the foamy whites.
November 5, 2023
As I build up the forms, I've been deliberately adding more and more detail. The result is striking when viewed up close.
November 11, 2023
Nearing completion, just need a few more tweaks. The last stretch of a painting is never heroic. It is obsessive. I kept returning to the same passages, adjusting edges, value shifts, and the foam’s brightness until the chaos felt organized and the calm felt earned.
FINISHED
Done didn’t feel like a victory lap.
It felt like the painting finally held its own weight. After months of studies and revisions, the chaos stopped reading as chaos and started reading as intention.
From the beginning, I was chasing one experience: the roar of the Saco River trapped between the mills, loud enough to erase thought, mesmerizing enough to make time disappear. The hard part was keeping that intensity while building clarity—so the surface could be overwhelming up close, but coherent from across the room.
When it finally clicked, I could stand there and feel the river again. Not as a scene, but as pressure, rhythm, and release. That was the finish line.
