This painting was the result of when my two personalities, Sue and Suzy, collaborate. The background that looks like a table cloth was made with acrylic glazes on multi-media paper. When that dried, I put a coat of matte medium over the whole surface to cut down on the gloss of the glaze. I then applied three coats of Golden's pastel paste, slightly diluted. I allowed each coat to dry thoroughly (45 min.) before applying another coat.

These acrylic products are transparent when dry, so I could still see the background. Then I painted the apples with soft pastel. It is a good idea to put gesso on the back of the paper to prevent buckling. "An Apple's Destiny" is an 11 x 14 in. painting. Since I have about 150 lb. of apples that we picked in Michigan, there might be more apple paintings in the near future.

Suzy, my playful personality, seems to be dominant lately. I have started a series of experiments in pastel with abstraction. The floral abstraction above started with a free form drawing and then the use of the complimentary colors of blue and orange. This actually was inspired by a failed painting that I tried to take off of the paper. Some of the color remained. By free form drawing I mean that I looked at the photo reference but did not look at what my hand was doing on the paper.

Here are four small paintings (5 x 7 in.) that came about with another approach.

I have 3 sandwich bags. In the first bag I have design patterns like Z shape, Grid, Diagonal, Closed, Cruciform, L shape, etc. In the second bag I have a color that is either a primary or secondary color. In the third bag, I have information that decides the rest of what will be my palette of colors: complementary, split complementary, monochrome, triad, etc.

So, I first pick one randomly out of the first bag to determine the structure or the bones of the composition. Then I pick the main color from the second bag. Finally, I pick from the third bag which tells me what will be the other colors in my palette.

For example, the first one was a Z pattern even though I like it better on its side so it looks like an N. The primary color was yellow orange with the complementary color of blue violet. I pick different values with these colors and some grays in those colors as well. This limits my colors for the painting.

I'm finding that this process is like meditation. There is no pressure to produce something that looks like anything in particular but I still have some direction or parameters to follow. The most difficult one was violet monochrome in a closed pattern. That is the one with Joy on it.

Suzy worked on these abstracts and Sue worked on a still life. It is that time of year when I have to do a gourd painting.

Next time, I'll tell you about a project that was a collaboration between my two personalities.