Creative Process

Many of my paintings take shape and form while I am semi-asleep in the early morning hours. When I awake, the painting is usually close to being finished in my mind. Then I need only to go into the studio and begin putting it on canvas or paper. Things do change along the way though, I sometimes stop for days or weeks to ponder where to go next. I dare not paint if I don’t know where to go.

Sometimes it seems the brush and flow of ink or paint find their own way onto the canvas or paper surface. The ‘drips’, mistakes, or accidents often turn out to be fortuitous and usually remain as part of the finished creative product. Occasionally I turn the canvas upside down after it has dried, then the brush drips seem to be climbing up the surface of paint . This adds a depth and dimension to the work which people find most interesting. It can be seen in many of the fully abstract paintings in the Gallery.

Sometimes when I’ve heard and read too much of the world and its misfortunes, I need to let out my emotions in some way. And my way is naturally, through my art. The Social Commentary section of the Portfolio is my expression of these deeply felt emotions. The trilogy ‘The Human Condition’ makes particularly effective use of the ‘drips’ and a strictly limited palette, in my view, heightening the sense of anguish I meant to convey.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, the ‘Undial’ Series, purely abstract, was intended to use strong colors as a means to create a peaceful canvas. I juxtaposed colors that are almost too bold and too strong to be used together, to showcase their brilliance. Two in this series of paintings were accepted at the Farber Birren Color Award Competition in Stamford, Conn. by the Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the Museum of Modern Art, NYC. One playful use of cheery color is in the pair of acrylic paintings ‘Clouds of A Color’. I painted these in Florida at an art colony. The sun and sky certainly did have an effect on me.

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Evan Handler
Lowell Handler
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Artist Studios at Fearrington Village