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When is it a good idea to put wings on an easel?   When it makes the painting just perfect.

One day a few years ago I painted a little picture of my easel.  Innocent enough.  The more I looked at it the more I knew that there was something almost magical about that little painting and I couldn’t get enough of it.  In the past ten years I’ve done more than thirty paintings of easels. I gotta tell you, there’s something in that object and in its shape that transports me to another place.  Working on another easel painting a year later I found myself really struggling with making the image something special and I ended up just for fun giving it a wing.

Well, that really did it.

I thought just plain easel painting was cool, but one with a wing was real joy.  I avoid displaying obvious meanings in my paintings, preferring for viewers to make discoveries on their own, so I find ways to shroud them in mystery or hint subtley at the symbols or I’ll even paint something in and then paint over it.  Yes, I realize now writing this that that’s a little extreme.  So, sue me!

I called that canvas “The Forbidden Red Wing.”  Here’s my most recent easel, finished just two days ago.

Winged Easel - 2010 - oil on canvas - 12 x 9 inches