The woman behind this beautiful smile is the woman I fell in love with way back in 1986. Some of the most meaningful influencers in my life have been women. There has been no greater influence on me than The Lovely Loleita. The image for this painting was taken on a vacation we took in August 2017. We were staying at the Colony Hotel in Kennebunkport Maine. With large windows overlooking the ocean, the sunsetting, and a bottle of wine, our smiles came freely.

With this painting I'm continuing to experiment with adding Impressionist and Fauvist elements in my paintings. Fauvism is a avant-garde art movement starting in the early 20th-century and is defined by its vibrant, non-naturalistic colors and raw, expressive brushwork. It liberates color from its traditional descriptive role. Artists ignore real-world colors, painting skies green or faces blue for example, to convey emotion rather than reality.

I've also added a looseness in the background and underpainting to contrast with my thousands of tightly spaced dots detailing the center of the image.



You can learn more about my journey to Pointillism here.