Floating in water is where my body feels suspended, almost weightless, and the effort of moving is so balanced and graceful as to seem effortless. That’s the feeling I try to keep with me when I’m moving through the world, and it’s the feeling I want my work to have.

My art is literally created by water, and imbued with its dynamics of movement, fluidity and flow.

More about the floating colors process below

Blue water, 14 x 18.5 in., Fabriano, 1993

Even though I’ve created them myself, these floating colors papers seem like objects found in nature – shells on a beach, or patterns in sand – but filled with personal meaning. So they represent the aspect of creativity that’s natural, uncontrolled, unselfconscious … while my overlaid drawing represents its artistic duality: more conscious, willfully formed, cognizant.

Dark garden, 12 x 9 in., Dieu Donné, 1994

Shaped form, 8.75 x 5.75 in., kozo, 1993

Shadowy red form, 8.5 x 5.375 in., JB Green, 1993

In my early work, I used the floating colors imagery to suggest the figure and express the feeling of living in my body.

Red Forms, 12.25 x 10 in., kozo, 1993

Green face, 11.25 x 8 in., JB Green, 1993

Figure from behind, 8.5 x 6.5 in., Bergerac, 1997

When I began drawing my figure and its anatomy, the organic patterns of the floating colors helped me to suggest the nerves and blood and bones of the body’s interior.

Bluegrey stretching/kneeling figure, 9.5 x 12.5 in., Bergerac, 2000

As I draw, I feel my body pouring directly into the lines I make on the paper … remembering how it feels to move freely, feeling pain dissolve into fluid grace.

Bluegrey stretching/kneeling figure, detail with view of floating colors underlayers

Bronchial tree (gold), 9.75 x 8 in., 2003

Lung, opened, 9.25 x 12 in., Twinrocker Rotunda, 2012

Bone scaffolding (trabeculae), 10.75 x 9.25 in., Moulin de Fleurac, 2003

Neural network with floating colors (#1), 10 x 7.5 in., archival digital pigment print, 2006

Arbor vitae with 4th ventricle (yellow), 10 x 6.5 in. on Twinrocker Yale, 2018

Vertebrae series #5 (edgy balance), 11 x 7 in., Twinrocker Yale, 2021

About the floating colors process

I begin by sprinkling thinned oil paints from a brush onto a tray filled with water. The water is blended with carrageenan moss, a kind of seaweed, to make it more viscous. Bronze powders in shades from pale gold to copper are mixed with the pigments. Deeper colors are dropped inside lighter ones to create shades and shadows.

As the colors slowly spread out on the water, they form pale circles beaded with gold, widening into ovals whose edges thread outward, veining together in darker filaments of line.

I lay paper onto this surface and transfer the floating image, then repeat the process many times, building up translucent layers of color and texture.

Transferred to paper, they become the foundation for overlaid figurative drawing, with charcoal, pastel pencil, and pastel.

View a film clip of the floating colors process