Blog / 2026 / The Back-and-forth of Art

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

This otter painting celebrates the first zoo for Philadelphia’s 52 Weeks of Firsts project, and, like many paintings, it started out as a drawing. This one to be precise.

Then, over the course of five weeks last fall, it became this painting. I started by blocking in the colors, knowing all along that I’d go back over the otters with a translucent brown to give them mass, before picking out highlights and more texture.

This is how I always paint, in a back-and-forth between mass and light, between large swathes of color and detailed brush strokes, between general and particular, big and small. I don’t blend paint: I put brushstrokes side by side in order to allow the viewers’ eyes to do the blending. I like the idea of inviting the audience to participate in this way, leaving more room for interpretation than a strictly photorealistic painting would.

Of course, in the case of public art like this piece, the audience participation goes further. The back-and-forth is many-layered.

Like here. I’ve gone back to a printout of the original design for the otter and I’m picking out lines on it, solidifying them so that I can trace them. (On the left here is a version of the tracing I didn’t like, so I’m redoing it.) Once I have the basic lines, I turn the black-and-white drawing into a coloring page for the people who love this otter parent and baby best, so that they can color it in themselves.

If you’d like a copy of this coloring page image, plus a special eagles sticker, join me on August 8^th at 11 in the morning at the Philadelphia Zoo for a special 52 Weeks of Firsts festival!