Water Sports

For the most part water media, particularly transparent watercolor, leave me cold. The lack of body and the intractability of the painted mark are difficult to warm to, especially for someone like me who has neither method nor plan when I begin a painting. My favorite games in painting are the search and the repeated revision of the work as it unfolds. It feels to me like my paintings lead me somewhere they want to go, rather than me directing the show. Watercolor seems to demand a stronger sense of navigation than I possess. That said, I occasionally find myself pulled toward the water, usually after looking at Turner, Sargent, or Hopper, three painters who seem to break the familiar dogmas of watercolor.

Recently I've been splashing around with casein and gouache, two water media that combine some of the best aspects of oil painting, namely the potentiality of developing an actual sculptural surface, with qualities of transparency and translucency that are uniquely their own. Below, a selection of work over the past two summers in Italy.