I came to acrylic painting through the ACEOs — the small cards — and I'm still primarily working at that scale. But the medium has opened up in ways I didn't expect when I started.

At the card level I work primarily with acrylic markers. The honest reason is control — markers give me a consistent line and let me focus on composition instead of managing the tool. Fine detail gets a micron pen. Still, I have decent control with a brush that I can't explain. Heat and Silent Night both exist as small card originals and larger brush-painted versions. Neither is a copy of the other. Same person, different moment, different scale.

How a session actually goes

I usually start abstract. No subject, no plan — just color and movement as a warm-up to get out of my head and into the work. Sometimes that's where I stay for the whole session. Sometimes a subject emerges from the abstraction and I follow it.

When I get stuck, I have an inspiration box. It's not a jar, despite what I sometimes call it — it's a box filled with fortune-cookie-sized slips of paper, each one with an idea written on it. I draw one and paint what it says. It's a simple system and it works better than staring at a blank card waiting for inspiration to arrive on its own.

From small to large — and across mediums

Professional artists use thumbnails — small, fast studies to work out a composition before committing to a large canvas. The ACEOs work the same way for me, except the thumbnails are finished, sellable pieces in their own right.

If a card resonates — with me, or with someone who sees it — it can become something larger. Sometimes that's a bigger painting in the same medium. Sometimes it crosses into something else entirely. Remember the Cross started as an acrylic marker card with fine point detail work, and that same image became a pyrography piece burned into wood. The idea traveled; the medium changed; both versions are their own thing.

It goes the other direction too. The Comfy Crappie started as a pyrography piece — shown at the Blanden Memorial Art Museum — and later became a linocut print. Same subject, completely different process, different wall.

I'm not a machine spitting out reproductions. Each version is made by a person in a particular moment that won't repeat, but that is the fun part. Seeing what happens by the end of every session.

Curious about the other mediums I work in? Check out The Mediums I Work In for a deep dive (or to continue down the rabbit hole) into how I got into each one and what they mean to me.