The Stillness from My Ship

Acrylic on canvas, 8 x 10."

Rumination on the One-Hundred Paintings Project

The problem for a diversified artist--genre-loving, genre-hungry--is, of course, where do I find the time to actually do everything I want to do? The "Mrs. Norman Project" pushes this quest to an extreme. I want to do a wonderful portrait for the comissioner, but how do I satisfy her desire for the perfect and most evocative painting ever if I can't see the subject? Blowing up the reference photo doesn't help. It's too old, too grainy. Plus, half the work that I imagine that I CAN do is imaginary. I can't see the subject, after all. I'm creating the subject from scratch every single second.

PASTEL JOURNAL gave me an idea for how to proceed. There's an article in there about a pastel artist who decided to do 100 different versions of a landscape to see how reinterpreting the subject matter might alter her work. After reading this article, I immediately decide to adopt the same principle with Mrs. Norman. I'll do one-hundred different paintings of the same subject, reimagining the commissioner's mother in every possible guise, with every possible approach! One-hundred paintings that I'll place in their own portfolio, and Mrs. Norman can choose whichever painting she likes! In the meantime. I'll be pushed to be more prolific than I am naturally, which is damned prolific. I'll be forced to develop as a visual artist because I'll be adopting so many different techniques/styles/approaches in the quest to create the definitive MRS. NORMAN PAINTING.

The Mrs. Norman Project

Hello, Art Lovers! Recently I received a painting commission from a lovely woman I met at Defined Fitness, a fellow cycling and Body Pump enthusiast who'd admired my art from afar (bless her heart!) and wanted me to execute a portrait of her mother. The only problem was--is--that the only photo the commissioner possesses of her mother (deceased) is about the size of the tip of my thumb. Out of this sense of impossibility, though, was the "Mrs. Norman Project" born. The commissioner (again, bless her heart) is an admirer of radical and wildly imaginative artists, such as Lucian Freud, and doesn't mind my reconstructing her mother from memory and scratch.

More on this later.

Fragmented Sunflowers Seek Clarity and Balance

An abstraction that proposes that sunflowers need to seek their own special state of Zen enlightenment. Colored pencil on Stonehenge paper, 11 x 14." Detail only.

ORIGINAL FOR SALE:

$300.00

Floating Floral/Leaf Forms (An Abstraction)

An abstraction in colored pencil on Stonehenge paper, 11 x 14." Rich saturation, and the colors appear to float. This is a detail shot only. CP is a labor-intensive medium, and this colored-pencil painting took forty-eight hours to produce.

ORIGINAL FOR SALE:

$300.00

MY PHILOSOPHY OF ART

There are no extremes in the realm of aesthetics. Create a startlingly vivid visual experience, a realm the viewer can dwell in forever, the dramatic moment expanded, extended, amplified, and you--as a visual artist--have gained control of the universe. To create this sense of drama, ANYTHING is allowed: intense palettes, wild color effects and saturation, fragmentation, fracturing, abstraction, expressionism. To see is to believe. Make the viewer believe in the artistic universe of individual creation that's been set up, and anything--absolutely anything--becomes possible, becomes desirable.

For inquiries about my work or to purchase a painting or drawing, please contact me at

tbrowndavidson@comcast.net

Portrait of Sace