As many of you have noticed, Madison Brown Trout has been slated as “Artists Collection”. Well, yes indeed this it true.

This may sound funny, but it never occurred to me to keep a painting for my own- as much as I love each and every one- I’ve realized Madison has reserved a very special place in my heart. At an art show this past June, a patron was studying this painting closely, inquiring, then ultimately revealing a purchase was being contemplated. I panicked. Not jumping out of my seat flailing my arms , screaming out loud kind of thing…but everything inside of me DROPPED, like my organs were hanging from a noose. Paralyzed and fighting dramatic overreaction I just squeaked out “uh, hmmm”. I was able to form a few more sentences and we talked about the work then the conversation ended with him saying “I love it, I’m going to think about it”- I could have kissed the man.

Without a final sale, when I got home from the show I hung the painting on my wall and knew it would never leave. Madison Brown Trout was one of my first paintings where I had began pushing my own personal boundaries as an artist. The composition initially started in the vertical, in this I painted abstract collages of imagery of water- finding associations of the ripples in the waves to ridges in the sand, the rocks of the shoreline- color of the sky, its interplay within the motion of the water- translucency. I was abstracting to the point of interjecting my own personal response to water, the inexplicable “awe” of it, that intrigue and discovery was being laid out in emotional marks of paint. While I had pictures of water tacked on the wall next to me, the process became less about painting the pictures and what I saw- it became about what I remembered when being in the places where the pictures where taken and how it made me feel. The next step was flipping the canvas to the horizontal layout (as it is now) and then looking at photos I had of a Madison Brown Trout. Granted, I did not catch this fish, but the coloring of the fish and his interplay with the water brought out the same emotional response as when I was simply looking at imagery of water alone. I was awe struck. I began finding connections between what was already on my canvas to the fish image I was now looking at- rocks became the spots of the trout, sand and waves outlined the scales of the fish, textures married from the jagged outline of a rocky shore to the fluid liquid drips from the trouts belly. I was gone. These subtle yet poignant connections between the fish and the natural world became my drug, and ultimately took my process as an artist to a new level.

Bottom line, I knew I needed that painting forever. I feel lucky I didn’t learn it the hard way. The next time you are looking at artwork think about it: what if someone else took it home. If you feel a stab in your gut you will know you’ve connected to the work- buy it- because original paintings truly are once in a lifetime.