Orange Man

The beginning of something I didn't quite know I was beginning.

Whether you call it the lynchpin, the keystone, or simply the starting point, Orange Man opened the floodgates for my wax-string figure explorations. It was the first. And, honestly, it was the scariest. I had been thinking about this painting for a long time before I finally made it. The idea was there, turning over in my head, but taking that first step from I wonder if I could… to I'm actually going to do this felt like a much bigger leap than I expected. There is always something a little terrifying about the first piece in a new direction. You don't know yet if the idea will work. You don't know what the next one will look like. You don't even know if there will be a next one.

But Orange Man became the permission slip. The painting allowed me to start exploring what would become my wax-string figures: sculpting the figures myself, arranging them, lighting them dramatically, and then translating those strange little constructions into oil paintings. The process gave me a new way to build a character before I ever put paint on the canvas.

At this stage, I was particularly interested in color, line, and shadow. I wanted the colors to work together in unexpected ways without becoming chaotic. I wanted the lines to feel clean and deliberate. And I wanted the shadows to have real weight and become part of the composition rather than simply evidence of a light source. Those elements became foundational to the series.

Looking back at Orange Man, I can see the rawness of the idea. It isn't trying to do everything. It doesn't need to. It is the beginning of an exploration, and I think there is something valuable about seeing an idea before it has had time to become completely resolved. There is also something satisfying about realizing that the thing you've been thinking about for ages doesn't actually become real until you finally stop thinking about it and make it. Orange Man taught me that. Sometimes the hardest part of making a painting is getting out of your own way long enough to make the first one. And once I did, there was no going back. One figure became two. Then three. Then a whole strange little world.