Feminine Fragments

Oil on wood panel, 20 x 30 cm. Close-ups of women in everyday life: a hand around a glass, red lips, a folded coat, one tulip. Realistic from a distance, a mess up close.

I paint women the way you actually notice them, in pieces. You catch a wrist, a mouth, the light on a shoulder, and your head fills in the rest. That is what this series is. Not portraits, fragments.

A blank wood panel in the studio before painting — The panel before anything happens to it.

They are small on purpose. A 20 x 30 cm panel keeps me fast, and fast is when the paint does the interesting things. Oil, wet on wet, dripping and splashing while it is still moving. Up close it falls apart into smears. Take three steps back and she is there.

Wet oil paint being worked on the panel — Wet on wet. This is the part that either works or does not.

I started these after years of large commissions. Big work is planned work. Someone else already has it in their head before I start. These panels are the opposite: I paint whatever caught my eye that week and find out afterwards whether it worked. Some of them do not, and those never make it here.