In this strange year of isolation I’ve somehow managed to have some really great opportunities to collaborate with others and go outside the comfort zone of my studio.

I’ve spent many years painting what music looks like so it was only quite fitting that this first project should fall in my lap. Last summer, one of my long time musical heroes, Matt Wilson (Trip Shakespeare, The Flops, The Twilight Hours, Matt Wilson and His Orchestra) reached out as a fan to see if I’d be interested in contributing from time to time to his new bi-weekly streaming music show. My answer was of course, YES.

So, the idea was to paint as Matt played and sang along live. The first episode he chose one of my favorites “If You Miss Me” from Trip Shakespeare’s 1991 album, Lulu. It’s the final track on the album and finishes with a chorus of crickets that trill along for several minutes after the song ends and it’s lovely. For 30 years, every time I hear crickets it’s the song that immediately pops into my head. So, the day I recorded the video of myself painting, I had the lone accompaniment of my sole resident studio cricket chirping loudly in the corner and like Pavlov’s dog, “If You Miss Me” queued on my internal radio station and that’s what I ended up painting. It wasn’t until a few weeks later when Matt chose the song line up for the episode that I learned he chose the song I was thinking of. Kismet! You can find that episode here.

I got to join in on a couple more episodes which you can see here (with special guest Dan Wilson) and here (featuring special guest, Chan Poling. I highly recommend watching them all on Matt’s YouTube channel when you get a chance.

Lastly, finished pieces below from L to R: Episode 1 “You Brought Me Through” (sold), Episode 4 “You Can Make It Through These Waves” (sold), and Episode 9 “Alone” (sold)