Right now, I am experimenting with just how much paint is actually needed over a sketchy drawing.

Wolf Study II is, in many ways, a return to the way I began creating art. I see myself in this painting. I see the many, many hours I used to spend creating intricate drawings of my subjects. I wanted spareness. I wanted detail where it mattered. I wanted the eyes.

As I learned to paint, I gradually let my drawings move backstage. I learned to let the paint describe my subjects, and somewhere along the way, I left behind something I had always loved.

I rediscovered that lost love with this study. You see, I really love the drawing.

I want to see it. And in it, I want to see me.

In this painting, letting the marks remain visible, being willing to leave some things unresolved, and letting the viewer complete them felt so right. I am going to explore these ideas more, and see where those explorations take me. This is going to be fun!

There came a horse at midnight's hour,
A shadow crowned with mane,
That fled beneath the starless sky
As though it fled from pain.

I watched him pass the midnight veil,
A phantom pale and fleet.
What could have driven him so far,
What followed at his feet?

Perhaps he fled the moonless grave,
Perhaps the dead had stirred,

Or worse, perhaps he fled himself,
From something left unheard.

Then darkness closed upon his path,
The hoofbeats ceased at last,
And where the horse had thundered through,
There lay the silence vast.

Yet still, when night descends upon
The fields beyond my door,

I hear a hoof upon the earth,

And then I hear no more.