Dots, Grids and Expressive Lines

This piece brought together three types of imagery found in my artwork. Below are two sketches as well as the final piece.


colored pencil on paper, 5.5" x 8.5"


colored pencil on paper, 5.5" x 8.5"

At The Decordova Museum outside of Boston, I saw a kitsch show back in 2005. There were lots of sentimental objects and garish pieces. When I got back to Metairie, I started working on this piece. In each square of the grid, I picked six colors blindly. I then chose which ones to make the background in a square and which others to color the dots. Then I'd pick six more again and again until I had used all the colors in the set.

Normally instructor artists will tell you to use a limited palette. I was determined to use every color in the box of 120 colored pencils. I kept pulling six colors until I went through the whole box then started over picking six colors at a time.


colored pencil on paper, 21" x 26.5"