Dance Man

graphite on paper, 8.5" x 11"

Gesture Rocks Shaded

In the next sketch I thought I should add shapes that people would more easily recognize. So I went for oval ones. On previous occasions I’ve made them into rocks. On time, someone did ask me if they were potatoes. Whatever they really are, I liked what happened in this sketch. I also had fun playing a cubist visual game of overlapping planes in the same piece.


graphite on paper, 8.5" x 11"

Gestural Lines

When I was younger, I used to love drawing random gestural lines and then going back to find shapes created by them. I also used to color inside the shapes I created. In college, an art professor told me that my gestural lines were stronger than the lines I normally drew. One recent evening, while passing time at an art gallery reception, I started a doodle that went back to that way of working. My recent images have been so tight that I thought I should now try to loosen up again.


graphite on paper, 8.5" x 11"

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"