Jupiter

I have wanted to be a painter since my first art class at six. I decided I would paint every day while listening to music, and I never changed my mind. Afraid of not making it as an artist, I compromised and became a designer for over a decade.

What I still didn’t have was a subject. I tried many techniques and never found one I wanted to keep painting, or a voice that could grow as I did. Then Jupiter came into my life in May 2019.

Jupiter and I don’t share a language. What we have is the gaze, and that wordless connection is what I paint. Half of this series is Jupiter, in acrylic on canvas at a large than human scale, so his micro-expressions are amplified and the world is just us.

The other half are dogs I met in life and online, most of them rescues, dogs whose gaze caught me. What I love about dogs is that no matter how badly they have been treated, you still find light and hope in the way they look at you.

That light is what I am painting.