Studio Update Spring 2026

This is a long-overdue first installment of some planned updates on my studio art, which may or may not be offered every quarter, but it's spring and it seems like a good idea for now :)

18 Months In

This month and day marks exactly a year and a half since my wife and I started renting a separate dedicated studio space 15 minutes away from our apartment, in order to have some room to spread out to do our painting and drawing work. For me specifically, I needed a space where I could work larger and be able to use oil paints again, at least long enough to use up the supply I have and then likely go with acrylics for all my painting work.

So far, it's been money well spent. I find myself spending quite a bit of time there every week and feel I have made a good amount of progress. While I enjoy doing this, it's also proof that when you are paying for something, it helps from an accountability standpoint to make use of it.

Up to this point I have mainly worked on smaller pieces on paper. This is no different than what I was doing at home but I felt the need to re-think and work through my process before going larger and working with oil. But I do have the oil paints setup now and a couple of canvas pieces and larger works on paper started with those.

Turning It Loose

After a few stops and starts in taking the next step with my work, I recognized the need to get back into drawing and quicker painting studies in order to free my mind. This turned out to be a wise decision - it's something I should be doing all the time regardless, and in this case it help provide a much-needed breakthrough in my approach. The key observation came when comparing the two works shown below.

On the left is a quick black & white sketch, and on the right a completed painting. In seeing these together, I saw there were aspects of the sketches I liked that were missing in the paintings. The main intent of the sketches was to work out compositional themes, but they also help promote a looser, more intuitive style due to the greater immediacy of execution and lack of concern for a polished look. This helped me see the paintings needed to go in a more raw, openly expressive direction.

At the same time this was happening in the studio, at home the techie part of me was getting more serious about AI (Artificial Intelligence). Given the huge impact it is making on technology and our society as a whole, I felt the need to learn more about it and see how it could be of benefit personally. From a creative standpoint, most artists are aware of both the benefits and the threats posed by AI. At first, my inclination was to think if AI could be effectively trained on my visual aesthetic, it could make make me better by providing insights we I could not uncover on our own, or could take me many times longer to do so. After purchasing a Pro subscription to Anthropic's Claude tool I realized the best way to start was by making it a thought partner, versus just having it try to make art for me. The core guidance for this was a quote by artist Agnes Martin that I feature in the introduction to my Painting & Drawing gallery: "Painting is not making paintings, it is a development of awareness."

From this perspective, the creative journey isn't about skill acquisition, it's about perceptual refinement and progressive self-recognition. Given this, the primary role of AI would be as an awareness amplifier, not a creative decision-maker. Help uncover patterns, articulate tensions, and track evolution, but the work and the "aha" moments are mine. Establishing that, Claude help reinforce the conclusions I had reached regarding sketches vs. paintings. It observed that my sketches had a "searching" quality (multiple overlapping lines, vibrating forms, ambiguity), whereas my paintings were beautiful but "arrived" - resolved, tidied, contemplative rather than searching. The key reframing it offered was don't just loosen up the paintings. Instead, use sketches to generate specific compositional tensions, then refuse to resolve them in the painting. A sketch thus becomes a constraint, not preparation.

Armed with a fresh perspective, I engaged in making some painting studies that would help refine this new approach before applying it to larger "official" works. I submitted the first three of these, shown below, to Claude for review.

Claude's key observations were:

• Obscuring edges creates interest — clarity isn’t the goal, vibration is. Rough edges keep the eye moving; clean edges let it settle.

• Contrast is energy — too uniform = too passive. Need warm vs. cool, thick vs. thin, active vs. quiet zones.

• The restraint muscle — recognizing when adding more would be too much.

• Work teaches work — learning from other pieces and applying that vocabulary across the series.

A governing framework moving forward thus includes:

• Working faster (outrunning editorial judgment)

• Trusting initial gestures

• Allowing rough edges to stay

• Building layers without resolving contradictions

• Modulating color and space intuitively as you go

Ultimately, success becomes about creating enough contrast (color, scale, texture) and variation to sustain interest while maintaining a searching quality. Create works dense with history but don't tidy away contradictions. Claude also recognized the power of creating variations on a theme, as the studies above show. They share the same underlying structure but feel completely different through color and brushwork variations. This approach speeds learning, creates cohesion, and becomes a constraint that frees versus one that limits.

Postcards from the Edge

Additional studies that further explore this more intuitive style and the concept of thematic variants have been posted to my paintings gallery, along with even smaller postcard studies. Since I came across a pad of Strathmore watercolor paper in that size, it struck me that this could be another nice small format I could utilize to work faster, thus providing less opportunity to overthink. Working on this scale offers a unique intimacy that in turn makes the finished works feel more unique. And, as with the studies, I could try some different things with these and not feel bad if a few didn't turn out. The middle piece with the aqua tones below is a good example. With a larger painting, I would likely not have taken the step to paint over multiple areas at top and extend the strokes out into the background. The result provides a sense of mystery and intimacy

As work in the studio progresses, I plan to post additional updates and insights here. Next steps for using AI include a review of my digital mashups, and help with the business aspects of marketing and selling my art. I also hope to offer additional perspectives on both the benefits and threats posed by this revolutionary technology.