10 Year Anniversary: The Painting Diary 5 0f 30

Painting Diary Day 5 of 30: Hornets, 2011

This one isn’t on my website and I never share it so I thought it would be fun to throw in a minor painting in this series. 

This one is notable for two reasons. One, this was the first time I painted a hornets nest, something I would revisit many times over the next few years. For me hornets nests (and bee hives) represents our fear of nature. Hornets are such tiny fragile creatures yet they can be downright vicious and relentless. They are also remarkable architects and examples of the beauty and power of organized teamwork without ego, for the greater good of the whole.

Secondly, it was the first painting I would sell, although it sat in storage for a couple years first, along with all my work. At this point in my story, early 2011, I was still not comfortable sharing my work. It had been 10 years since I shared anything in public and at this point I wasn’t trying to be an artist in full, I was just satisfying my need to do it, for myself. I wasn’t really convinced that full-time artist was the right path for me and so I was producing paintings just to see if I could, and then squirreling them away, waiting for the right time...

There are many many layers hidden under the surface of this oil painting. I was continuously changing my mind, searching for the right feel, the right color palette and the right mood. I started without any plan at all and really struggled to get it to a place where I was happy with it. Although I had good results with the last few paintings, working them out in Photoshop before starting to paint in oils, I felt like that took some of the fun out of the painting process. It was a little painful to paint something digitally and then repaint the whole thing again on canvas, I wanted to just jump in and throw caution to the wind with this one.

Hornets, Oil on canvas, 2011