There Are Layers Here You’re Not Considering

As Seen In:

  • 2025 CoCA Members Show at Collins Pub, July-August 2025

  • “Explorations in Abstraction” at Seattle Artist League, March-April 2025

  • “Beneath Strange Rocks” at Sugarwall Gallery, January 2025

Materials:

  • industrial cardboard

  • acrylic medium primer

  • watercolor ground in various colors

  • watercolor paint

  • water-soluble wax pastel

  • china marker

  • encaustic wax

  • tissue paper

There Are Layers Here You’re Not Considering was the largest painting I had ever made at the time I began working on it. The size of it was intimidating at first. I didn’t want to start working on it because I didn’t think I was skilled enough to be able to complete it in a way that I would be happy with. But then I realized that I never start a project with all the skills and ideas I need to be able to finish it and that, (plus a few pep-talks), led to me just starting anyway and worrying about how it would get done when I got there.

Some of the titular Layers are the challenges I faced in completing this piece. One being the flares of chronic pain that occurred during production. There were several days during which I would work on this piece for about 15 minutes and then have to lay on my back on the floor for up to two hours before I could move again.

Other Layers are the importance of the materials. When I got the idea to make this giant piece of cardboard into a painting, I knew right away that I wasn’t going to just paint on cardboard. I needed the picture to be about the materials in some way. That’s how I came to focus so much on hexagons in this and the other pieces in this series. It’s also why there are voids in the surface of the board exposing the internal corrugation, and why, when you see it in person, the edges are unfinished. I think it’s important to leave some aspects of a painting unresolved in order to reveal something about the process of making art.

The colors in this painting are largely focused on the interaction between yellow ochre and lavender in the mid- and upper-right sections. I can’t explain why I find this combination (and interplay with other similar colors) so enticing, but I made this out of paint, not words.

As the piece moved toward completion, feedback from a mentor inspired me to add additional materials as a way of pulling it all together. I used encaustic and tissue paper to layer on these additional textures, and a wax-based varnish to seal the painting surface. Since completing it, I have been able to conceptualize further large works and how other materials can be circulated into my watercolor process as a kind of fuel for my practice.