Beneath the Surface: Preparing for Neumann University

As I prepare for my solo exhibition at Neumann University, opening this January, I find myself in unfamiliar territory. I'm painting with a deadline, with an exhibition in mind—something I rarely do. Normally, I just paint, all the time, following where the work leads. This is different.

And it's changed everything.

How I Work

For more years than I can count, I've been creating color by layering oil paint, allowing colors to mix optically in the eye of the beholder as they look at the paintings. About five years ago, I started underpainting in acrylic (quick-drying) and glazing with oil on top, which lets me bury some elements slightly visible in lower layers while keeping others on the surface. These elements were always shapes formed by brushstrokes and defined by color.

People who live with my work tell me the paintings reveal themselves over time—they start to see and recognize things they hadn't initially noticed.  

This layered revelation has always been central to my practice.

Letting Nature In

Some months ago, I decided to let nature influence my paintings more consciously.

Using line drawing and painterly representations, I began incorporating first dendritic forms seen in trees, blood vessels, and neural pathways, and then flowers, branches, and leaves into the layers.

What interests me is conveying the visual cues

of natural forms that people respond to with emotional resonance, not literal representation.

When Something Shifts

Then something else pushed through.

The new paintings embody a tension I hadn't fully allowed previously—one between nature's raw power and human vulnerability. I'm working with more dynamic gestures now, summoning atmospheric intensity, explosive energy. These pieces function as visual metaphors for upheaval, environmental tempests, and psychological storms.

For years, my painting practice has transformed energy into something calming. But as our collective external environment grows more turbulent—politically, environmentally, emotionally—I've found it fitting to let nature's more powerful forces into the work.

I'm exploring how our inner landscapes are reshaped by personal, societal, political, and environmental pressures,

through layers of color and texture.  The work exists at the intersection of what is tangible and what is perceived through an emotional filter—the real world translated through subjective experience.

Trusting the Process

One painting in particular was developing so slowly. Deep blues and greens were layering up, botanical forms emerging and submerging. Yellow light pushed through in bursts. I could see leaves and branches taking shape at different depths, but something wasn't resolved yet.

Then suddenly I remembered: I've been photographing leaves and branches floating in streams and ponds for many, many years. Recalling one photo in particular, I went searching back through all my saved photos and found the one I was suddenly reminded of—from fifteen years ago!

When I brought it into the studio,  it became new input for the canvas that had been developing so slowly. The painting opened up.

What's Emerging

What's emerging holds both destructive and generative forces simultaneously, much like nature itself. Storms uproot, but redistribute nutrients. Turbulent waters churn, but also nourish. Natural forces can be both overwhelming and life-giving.

This isn't a departure from my earlier contemplative work—it's a deepening. The same attention to organic forms, the same reverence for natural processes, the same belief in painting as spiritual practice. But now I'm allowing the full spectrum of nature's power to show itself, including its capacity for chaos.

The calm and the storm. Both are true.

The Work Ahead

As I move toward January, I'm holding both—the meditative spaces and the volatile ones, the layered transparencies and the explosive gestures.

The exhibition at Neumann University will be a chance to share this evolution, to invite viewers into these more intense spaces, and see what resonates.

Exhibition Details:

Solo Exhibition at Neumann University Opening: 2/14/26 2-4 pm

McNichol Gallery hours: 10-4 M-F

Location: In the Thomas A. Bruder, Jr Life Center

1 Neumann Dr.

Aston PA 19014

The painting shown here is "Where Water Remembers" (48 x 48", Acrylic and Oil on canvas).

I'll be sharing more paintings from this body of work in the coming weeks as I prepare for the show