When a Painting Learns to Fly

For years, I've built mobiles by thinking about movement first.

This experiment turned that process upside down.

Instead of beginning with shapes that would eventually move through the air, I began with a blank sheet of Evolon and asked a different question.

"What kind of painting wants to become a mobile?"

The answer didn't come all at once.

First came the matte gel primer, rolled across the surface to prepare this unusual textile for paint. Then heavy body acrylics found their way onto both sides of the sheet. Broad passages of color appeared before slowly giving way to smaller conversations—lines, dots, symbols, and repeating marks that seem to emerge almost on their own.

Those little marks have become my favorite part of the process.

I jokingly call them my graffiti, but they are much more than decoration. They create rhythm. They connect colors. They lead your eye across the surface and, 

eventually, from one moving panel to another.

As I worked, something unexpected happened.

I stopped thinking about making a mobile.

I simply painted.

Only later did I begin imagining where the cuts would fall and how each section might dance with its neighbors. The painting itself began suggesting the composition.

That may be the biggest surprise of this experiment.

The mobile is no longer the starting point.

The painting is.

Soon this single sheet will disappear beneath scissors, stainless steel rods, and a balancing wire. One image will become many. Front and back will take turns greeting the light. Colors that now sit quietly beside each other will separate, reunite, overlap, and change with every gentle breeze.

The painting won't be destroyed.

It will simply learn to fly.