In Progress

Sometimes, when people are looking at one of my paintings, they will point at a particular object and ask me if it was difficult to paint.

My answer is usually something along the lines of “Everything is difficult to paint well, and everthing requires my full attention to paint correctly”.

It’s a true answer, if a little humorless and dry.

But glass is different.

Glass has this magic, elusive visual poetry to it – it’s there, but it isn’t really there at the same time.

It makes its presence known by the very slightest shifts of light and color, while appearing to have no more weight and substance than air itself.

Creating the illusion of glass with oil paint requires the highest degree of attention to the subtlest changes, and any miscalculation can instantly ruin the illusion.

Pushing through these challenges and successfully rendering that illusion is also one of the greatest rewards in still life painting.

I’ve been working on a painting this week that features a small glass tumbler with a beautiful etched pattern on it – a glass that I’ve painted several times now.

The above video shows the stages of painting that glass.