My Palette

There’s this thing that happens when I’m preparing my palette at the beginning of any project, when fresh paint hits freshly-scraped, pristine plexiglas. It’s a moment of reverie and deep satisfaction sprinkled with a faint crackle of nervous anticipation.

Arranging the colors in just the correct sequence is the code that opens the gate. The familiar smell of Linseed Oil is the painter’s incense, an invitation do dive right in. Sometimes, though, the untouched cleanliness of the whole setup is religious like an altar and I’m afraid to touch it, to muddle the perfection. So, recently I decided to preserve the moment.

My usual palette, for the last 10 or so years.

I’ve arrived at the following palette through a natural distillation of my working process over the last 15 years of making paintings: