Large Watercolors

Untiled (July 26, 2013) - Watercolor on Paper - 30 x 41 inches

The watercolors for the Ralph Lauren window have been returned to me and I wanted to share a few of the large ones. These bigger watercolors were a challenge for me, watercolor being a media that does not scale up easily. That is to say that the liquid qualities of the material move, absorb and generally do not act in the same manner on a large piece of paper as they do on a small one. So there was a learning curve in their creation, and I did have to destroy a few very large and expensive pieces of watercolor paper in the process. But when the were successful they were very impressive. Part of the process involved pouring large amounts of pigmented liquid across these beautiful pieces of paper, that reminded me of some of the abstractionist from the 1960's. Things would have to completely dry between each pass, which on a sunny warm day was not a problem, but on a cool cloudy day could take many hours. And finally my hand would have to intrude and risk the final few layers of waves and clouds. The results are pieces that lack some of the intimacy of the small lake watercolors, but have an impact that emphasizes and mirrors the scale feeling of Lake Michigan.