Feeling Whole

Feeling Whole was painted some time in the early days of my stay in Bayfield hall the student residence building where I was a tenant from 1999-2004. Perhaps the basement apartment influenced the dark feeling of this painting, which features a lot of blue and dark brown (not black), punctuated by brown and oranges. The two girls off to the side were drawn from an old photo from high school graduation, while the fellow in the front is not meant to be anyone in particular. I will leave the interpretation of this one up to the viewer.

To create the splattered paint effect on the painting depicted in the background, I used a complicated technique of splattering the paint. Just kidding, it is not complicated at all, the only trick is to use a brush with relatively long bristles (a brush type called 'rigger' works great), and to load the brush with a lot of paint that is not too concentrated. You may also want to watch the desk and wall around your painting when you flick paint, it tends to get messy. In this case, I overlaid the splatters on a wet-in-wet mixture of blues and brown to create a layered-texture effect.

11x14" hot press, 2000