A day in the studio.

From my workspace on the seventh floor, through my 3 south-facing windows I see the Manhattan Bridge and new construction in various states of completion in Dumbo.

The room measures 18’ x 25’, or about 41.8 square meters. I get very good afternoon light, though not the ideal northern light favored by many painters. 

I have never been a morning person, my energy picks up later in the day, and that is when I am most productive. After a morning spent drinking coffee, reading the newspaper and attending to correspondence and other types of errands, I arrive at the studio between 11 AM and noon. I have lunch, look around, and think about what I can do, what is dry enough to work on from the previous few days of work. 

In the course of a day I will work on a number of different paintings, sometimes as many as 8 or 10. A work is built up by the application of multiple layers of paint. I work primarily in oils but often use acrylics for base and under coats. With the oils, drying time is necessary between coats; this takes place over a varying period of time because different colors dry at different rates. A painting typically takes me 3 to 4 weeks to make, sometimes longer. 

As in doing any kind of work there can be a certain tedium at various points, certain processes just take time and are necessary to getting somewhere in the work. I reach a point in each painting once the surfaces have been sufficiently built up when it is time to focus on determining what the painting needs in order to be complete; what adjustments need to be made to resolve the picture. 

My palette is glass and sits on a table with wheels that I can easily move about the studio. An always changing selection of paints, brushes and tapes sits on this table. I mostly use brights or flat brushes, 1/2” to 2 inches wide. I’ll admit to a bit of brush abuse; I leave them sitting in solvents for extended periods of time. A few years ago, on a trip to Berlin, I brought an empty suitcase specifically to fill up with tape from several specialty shops there. It’s time for another trip.

Given current pandemic precautions and protocols, it has been a challenge to prepare this “open studio” since you are not actually coming to visit in person. To see my work live, please see my current exhibition - open to the public - May 14 thru June 27, at McKenzie Fine Art, 55 Orchard Street, New York, NY. http://www.mckenziefineart.com