The earliest pieces in the Swatching Series began appearing in 2021, about one year after I began painting with watercolor.  Part color test sheet to contemplate a potential palette and part practice for dry brush mark-making technique, I view these works as pure abstraction.  The pieces begin as a swatch card for a limited palette painting series and often become the most coveted piece of collage material, incorporating all the colors of a given palette applied with a wide range of marks; the perfect foil to solids and other patterned shapes. 

When I describe myself as an artist, I consider my watercolor work to be abstract realism, identifiable in some way with the inspiration that conceived it.  The Swatching Series is me working at my most intuitive. There is never a plan for this work to be anything more than a landing strip for marks and soft bleeds of rich color.  This chance-based outcome can be surprising and emotional, evoking or defining the theme or mood of the collage series it anchors.

Each time I work in a fresh palette brings an opportunity to add a piece to Swatching.  Look for an exhibition of this work in the Microgallery outside my studio in late 2026.