Here's an explanation of the series.

A gallery director asked me if I wanted to do a solo show for spring. Esteeming both art and art sales, she threw out the idea that maybe I could consider doing a series of paintings with bright, verdant colors that gallery-goers might be inclined to purchase on account of the season.

Initially I didn't like the idea - not being one accustomed to painting according to some strategy or plan, and being one who delights in rebelling even against my own parameters. After sitting on it for a bit, I arrived at a concept that I was very excited about.

For the previous 1.5 years, I have been doing almost exclusively small postcard size paintings. But now that my studio is in full effect, doing large paintings like I did in college isn't a big deal. Furthermore, for the last 1.5 years, I've been pretty insecure as an artist. It seems like every time I sat down to create a small painting, I would consistently want to see simple horizontal divisions of the picture plain and a circle. That's it. And I felt really insecure about that, feeling that I needed to push myself to explore more complex compositions.

Finally I realized that I have been stupid. It is precisely those insecurities that I am to target as an artist. So I decided I would do a series of paintings exploring those two compositional ingredients. Furthermore, instead of restricting color palette, I decided to work on a philosophical theme tied to spring.

I decided that the series would depict an initial circle which, through the succession of paintings, would show the circle enlarging with each painting until, in the final painting, the band/line of the circle would have become so large that it would have become a simple flat band. So the final painting would have a flat band, and a new circle, thus repeating the cycle.

I don't feel like I've articulated that well, so I'll rewrite it later. But that's what's up with this series. Only three of the paintings are complete. I'm also submitting the incomplete versions that do not have the circle component painted yet - just for the sake of record (in case I don't like what I do and paint over it).