"Where Micah Dwells" at the OPA National

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/0fdbd8_0e5740e492f54170a1b61545887cf102/480p/mp4/file.mp4

My painting Where Micah Dwells was featured in the OPA National Exhibition held at Reinert Fine Art in Charleston, South Carolina. This painting was made with the model Micah Davenport, a lovely young woman who happened to walk into my studio at the Torpedo Factory Art Center one day and was willing to pose for this painting which I began during the Friday Late Night open house. Many of my aesthetic motivations are largely subconscious and beyond simple explanation. I trust that my attraction to flowers as a subject relates to their strong evocation of the feminine and feminine beauty. That exploration of the feminine comes to the fore when I incorporate portraits with flowers. Since I am bending reality, but not really distorting it, I refer to these paintings as magic realism. It is using an altered reality not as a symbol but for the expression of something more ephemeral.