I hope everyone had a wonderful new year! I just want to thank Chris for starting this blog, I have loved reading everyone's posts.

I have always approached my paintings as a visual puzzle, an exploration for elements to fit together and create a personal and partly universal visual aesthetic appeal (I have heard other artists call this “a rightness”). I can find this same appeal in photographs, magazines and in life, but painting allows me to create it instead of just finding it, which I love. However, this means that my paintings have less of a direct message to convey to the audience (one that I can form into words); the searching becomes the message. At certain points in the semester, this was a struggle for me. I felt as though it wasn’t enough, that I needed something more concrete to drive my paintings. However, as I tried to latch on to a message to convey, everything I painted began to hold symbolic value rather than exist to create an emotional response, which I personally disliked. Luckily, over this break, I have managed to find a happy medium from which to approach my paintings. One day, my mom came into my room and hung one of my dresses on my curtain rod above my window and the light shining through it with the patterns of the blinds behind it was quite fascinating to me. I have always liked how you can take objects out of their original context and all of a sudden you notice their geometry, their texture, or they create something entirely new (when I saw that dress I no longer viewed it as a dress but rather as light, color, shape and texture). So, this coming semester I am planning on setting up still lives/mini installations in my studio to try and create these effects and give myself content from which to paint from. I also want to explore more variety in paint application. Working on panel for the first time last semester was really good for me because it forced me to apply paint differently. I am also curious about different ways to layer paint. I am drawn to the illusions created when a layer of transparent paint is overlaid another color. Anyone know any tricks on how to do this? Do you stick to oil, but wait for the paint to dry and then go over it with paint thinned with turps? Or, do you mix acrylic and oil? I would love to hear any thoughts or suggestions.