Weekly Wrap-Up: The dahlia painting has kept me both challenged and intrigued this week. I’m working toward a rich palette of purples, magentas, yellow-greens, and lemon yellows, but the colors have had a mind of their own — veins of orange where I wanted yellow, a wet layer of Permanent Rose bleeding into a fresh glaze and shifting the color scheme entirely. A compositional reset required painting opaque white and lemon yellow to recenter the flowers, leaving the center flatter and bolder than I intend for now. The background is starting to reflect the color range I’m hoping for, but I’m still finding my way. On days when the dahlia was too wet to continue, I returned to the magnolia — rethinking its palette too, toning down an angry red and wondering if an entirely new color scheme is what it wants. Through all of it, I’ve been using digital tools to test color and composition before committing paint to canvas, a habit rooted in my decades with computer graphics.

In the garden, forsythia are singing, grape muscari are in bloom, the camellia is flowering beside its aluminum print twin, and four yards of mulch arrived exactly where I needed it. Two successes in one day — studio and garden alike.

Click here to read all the week’s Studio Glimpses

These daily studio notes lead toward my 2026 solo exhibitions in New York City and  Poughkeepsie, NY.