Paintings – Oil on Canvas

GALLERY I

I've always found figurative work--with all its subtleties of gesture, variations of expression, drapery, light, shadow and mood--to offer an abundance of challenges during a painting's creation process--as well as endless pleasures when it comes to living with the finished work.

In any such painting, whether it be my own or that of another artist, one of my greatest pleasures is certainly that of re-living a brush stroke.

To me, a brush stroke is most priceless when its life and vital energy continues on long after the artist's hand has stopped its work. The brush's rise and fall, its twists and turns--sometimes dry, sometimes loaded with moist paint, sometimes moving slowly and sometimes darting across the canvas. All this becomes part of the perpetual dance performed at each viewing.

When visiting an art museum, gallery or a fellow artist's studio, I'll often find myself falling in love with a painting. But when I leave having fallen in love with a brush stroke--that's when I leave truly satisfied.

--Don Haggerty