The inspiration for the painting FAMILY TREE began with looking at a Box Elder tree at a family cabin in North Dakota. One arm of the trunk grew almost horizontally and was broken off at the end. The combination of the two thick trunks reminded visiting children of a horse which they mounted as a pretend horse during lake visit.

My interpretation took on the color challenge of working with “complementary” colors to create the appearance of overlapping parts of the trunk. In art, color theory identifies opposite colors on the color wheel as complementary colors that are helpful for managing the intensity of a color (its vividness). If the outcome is executed poorly a muddy color will result.

For Family Tree, I used my expertise as a colorist to primarily use “yellows” in the vertical trunk and “blues and violets” in the horizontal trunk being careful that overlapping the pigments as “wet on wet” would not allow the color flowing behind to cancel and become dull. The warm and cool colors in Family Tree interact like a dance of opposites; a balance to integrate but not to loose the distinction of the individual trunk forms.

Of course, the beginning inspiration, the studio creative process and the multiple interpretations by others add to the longevity of the artwork.