CELEBRATION: palettes
The used palette – smeared, layered, chaotic/ordered – acts as a record of every decision, every uncertainty, every spontaneous burst and thought that went into the work. A map of the decision-making process.
These palette pictures celebrate that rhetoric. Not just as a tool, but as a visual trace of creative thought, labor, and intuition – a glimpse beyond the reach of the artist.
Here's to celebrating some of my favorites.
Self-Portrait using Palette Squares from 10 Years of Teaching
2x2" Palette Squares on Board, 2025
Built entirely out of squares taken from the palettes of hundreds of students over the course of 10 years. Each snippet of the palette contributes it’s own tone, texture, and design, suggesting the way individuality emerges from fragments of influence and experience. Up close, it’s a patchwork of fractured thought and creativity; from a distance a portrait emerges.
“The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.”
- Lucian Freud
teaching
