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Have you ever been to retrospective of an artist's work? They often span the course of several generations worth of work.  I have been able to attend a number of such exhibits, including Rembrandt's work at the Chicago Art Institute and Richard Schmidt's work at Butler University.  It is always interesting to be able to see the cycles of an artist's development. 

As I think about my own work, I realize that I am in a position where the market sometime dictates to a certain degree what I paint.  Right now there is more interest in my landscapes.  Perhaps that is because I have more landscape work on my website.  I actually have worked intensively with the figure, but since I haven't been able to do as much of that lately I haven't put a lot of those images on my website.  Last year I did some figurative and portrait work again and I realized how much I miss working with the figure and doing portraits.  I hope to be able to do more work along those lines again soon. 

In the mean time, I am getting ready to show some of my landscape work to a gallery owner who exspressed an interest in it.  I am working on a new body of work.  It has literally taken me a few months of consideration and thinking to come to a plan that I am really excited about.  My landscape work has been moving toward deeper levels of abstraction, so that is what I have planned for my new series of paintings.  It is funny I have realized that I tend to paint in cycles.  There will be periods of time that are filled with lots of activity followed by relative quiet and reflection.  Always though I am re-evaluating and thinking; 'Is this what I really want to be doing?  Am I challenging myself as an artist?  Am I being true to my own voice?'  And I wonder, someday if I have a retrospective, what will be said about this time period of my professional development?