Viriditas, the series of green paintings I have now been obsessing over for the past few months is all but complete. Many of the paintings were in fact begun throughout the cold snowy months of winter. When everything was white and blank, I spent my time mixing greens – crushed rocks made to be the surrogates of vernal longings.

But even though a painting is begun at one time, I think finishing is another thing altogether. These paintings needed to rest a bit. They needed to sit off to the side and be unseen, only occasionally pulled out for reflection.

When I paint, it tends to be fast. The idea is there, its simply a matter of chasing and catching it. But hunting isn’t really the metaphor, because once you have it all there I let it rest, dry, and await the next phase. Hours, days, weeks, months, or years later, I return to the object at rest pushing and pulling to reawaken it – moving from complete to finished.