A Lasting Impression

I visit museums and galleries on a regular basis and sometimes a particular work of interest will influence one of my paintings several years down the road. Here is one instance where a museum painting has influenced one of recent paintings.

In October, 2002, I visited the "Degas and the Dance" exhibition at the Detroit Institute of Arts, and was struck by the brilliant orange color of one of the last paintings in the exhibition called "Dancers at the Bar," from the Philips collection.

I enjoyed the simple subject matter and brilliant colors of this painting and always thought it would be nice to paint something similar to it some day. One summer evening in 2007, I was taken by the brilliant colors that were illuminating across a group of clouds at dusk. That experience inspired to paint my Amber Series, and devote one of
those paintings, Amber Series #4, to the orange color palette of that
Degas painting that I had seen years earlier.