A photograph of rainbow Swiss chard in a seed catalog stayed with me for months. I loved the long stalks and unexpected combination of colors and eventually decided I wanted to create my own version.
I cut strips from another piece of canvas, dipped them individually in paint and laid them directly onto the larger canvas to build the stalks. I then drizzled paint over and around them, deliberately leaving portions of the underlying canvas exposed.
The overlapping strips, drips and exposed canvas created far more texture and movement than I had anticipated. I knew what I wanted to make, but I didn’t know exactly what the process would give me.
The finished painting surprised me.