I'd been saving up a sweet piece of cardboard, with some unique manufacturing graphics for an interesting painting. Finally the idea hit me to capture one of my favourite song lyrics. James Taylor's classic, "Fire and Rain" is hauntingly well-written tale of a friend's suicide, dealing with drug addiction and with fame and features the line "sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground".  Though in his case it refers to his old band the Flying Machines breaking up, the metaphor is a powerful one.

I choose to use the canvas vertically to represent the difference between a fiery old-fashioned biplane crash on the ground and the dreamy clouds in the sky. Other than that, I wanted to weave in some type, while using colours and textures and images in an experimental manner, to capture the melancholy of the song. I maintained some of the original cardboard imagery, for texture, and because the ladder kind of ties in...a high/low connection.

Every time I venture into an abstract painting I find myself somewhat lost. I guess the point is that by the end of the painting you should have found something along the way but with abstract works, I just never know when the journey is complete. There is a good amount of layering, making marks and covering them up, in this case across a six foot canvas for a conference room...but unless you regularly work in the abstract there is always the urge to improve upon it.

There is great challenge to be had, in reducing something down to to basics of colour and composition. I found this piece to be unique, actually going into it with a bit of a plan and colour tone, but finding out quickly that doing what feels right actually is the logical choice. Putting constraints on drips and splatters of paint is not a very sane thing to do.

Just like any other activity, it's a good idea to keep your painting muscles in good shape...otherwise they might just get flabby. I like to think of this sort of exercise as painting without an agenda. Find whatever surface is laying around the house and start to drop layers onto it. Mix mediums with different types of paints, pastels, solid colours, typography, line work, texture, collage, spray paint...anything you can get your hands on. The more the merrier. The best part is that there is no finish point. Simply stop when you feel the painting is interesting, or store it away to add to again later. Often as in my recent example, crops of the final painting can hold quite a bit of curious details within them.

Inspired by the orange brown colour scheme of the new living room, I could feel the creation of an orange painting was only a matter of time. Done on a horizontal gallery canvas in acrylic, East vs West began just as an an abstract mix of colours. On top of that, I layered another round of abstract colour, keeping the brushstrokes more defined and unblended. Feeling ok with that stage, I dropped on with oil pastel, two different line drawings. There is a New York scene done in light colour, and a San Francisco scene done in darker grey. Both drawings merge with each other to create an interesting visual collage. Depending on if it is brightly lit or dim, only one city sketch pops out from the mass of orange.