Portrait Studies

I first fell in love with painting with coffee on antique paper by doing portrait studies on ledger paper from my Great Great Grandparents rural Appalachian store. To this day these studies continue to draw me in to the history and the antiquity of the paper. Though these are simply portrait studies, they have a weight and a presence that often times my largest, complex pieces cannot contain. There is so much beauty to be found in the simplicity and a larger focus on the essence of the paper than on the subject that I add to it’s story.