This artwork is the first in a series of works I am creating in a collaborative endeavour with my longtime friend Prue Kelsey - photographer and writer. The purpose of this collaboration is for both of us to deepen our art practice, using the artist Georgia O'Keeffe as our muse. We have studied her art practice and are applying similar principles to these works.
Our primary intent is to convey the essence of the subject under consideration. Our first subject is the black kale, and this painting is the result of my journey in playing with the Kale, to see what it would reveal to me.
To create this image I began by photographing the Kale both in light and darkness, and then taking the best pictures, transferring them to photoshop and experimenting further with them. Whereas Georgia used black and white studies and multiple paintings, as her means of arriving at an image, I have modern tools that were not available to her.
This part of the process took me almost as long as it did to paint the picture. What I love about this image is the counterpoint of light and dark and the graphic lines created by the edges of the plant as they emerge from the darkness.