4 Koi,   30×40 inches,  oil on canvas

I had such a good time painting this image.    Can you tell?

Someone once told me that my work was all about the diagonals.     Bright color too.  But that’s a more obvious quality.     The diagonals are instinctive.    I never even thought about them until my friend Jim Mingo pointed them out.   Sadly,  he died.  He last name wasn’t really Mingo.    That was the name of his gallery.    But I often used it to hear his thunderous  laugh.    It never failed.

On occasion,  now,   I do think about those diagonals …  along with all the other compositional elements :  active versus passive passages,  my strokes,  and more.   I’m really not conscious of the dance my diagonal placement of the koi often creates as I paint these  japanese carp.     This 4 Koi painting reminds me of Matisse’s dance figures above.     Dance away.