I made two small paintings on wood around 2" x 3" as prototypes for consideration in an art vending machine.  It was so fun to explore making my faces on such a small scale.

 My painting “I Had No Idea” is one of three in a series I made in 2020 exploring faces and painting over old paintings of mine that were not successful.  I am an abstract oil painter and I think this is why it works for me. My primary subject matter is portraits and in this painting there are two people in conversation.  The viewer sees the face of one of the two people while the other face is almost not on the canvas.  I used large horizontal color blocks around the two faces to link them and show there is a connection between the two.  I have been taking liberties with faces for many years and in this painting I took a cue from a cartooning class I took once where we learned to exaggerate facial expressions (big eye and raised eyebrow to show surprise).  The abstract flower petal like shapes around the eye are based on a picture I saw in a magazine of a model wearing a cap that had what looked like flower petals all over it and it framed her face.  It really stuck with me, so I added abstract petal shapes because it looks cool.  I used ocean colors throughout because in conversation people are usually floating along on the words and sometimes conversations wash over us like waves coming to the shore and withdrawing back to the ocean.
 
 
 

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