From the art works of 2005 this one was catalytic towards my discovery of the Triangulation of Light and Dark. I had always wanted to paint an extremely dark-toned figure. There is an interesting story behind this work. In the winter months early in 2005, I was painting land/seascapes in Florida. This particular day was extremely foggy, so dense that I could see about 20'. I was painting a dark mangrove tree, Medusa's Head,  against the white fog. Out from the fog walked a coal black guy right up to me. We began to talk and he mentioned that he had modeled for artists--and then I got the idea for this painting which he posed for.

The painting is about pushing my darks to extremes at one end of the spectrum and  pushing my lights to the other  end. This idea eventually lead to creating a theory of light and dark, in which I triangulate 3 lights and 3 darks--pushing the envelope of the tonal range.

Switching to composition, this is quite a unique arrangement of the figure. I painted him from the perspective of standing on a table with my head near the ceiling--from that view I knew I would "frame" the image just right. This is also one of my all time favorite compositions of the figure; the play of positive and negative spaces is everywhere and that goes really well with the contrast between light and dark.