Painting Process for Jill Keller-Peters' Modern Works

The process for my paintings is time consuming, tedious, blind and very exciting for me. The very act of working with color takes me back to being seven years old. I resonate with the colors that I create and eventually place adjacent to each other. When I am painting I feel that I have stepped into another world where I live and breathe color.


Here you see a canvas with a grid that I have drawn with my straight edge and pencil, masking tape, previously painted color blocks and freshly painted color blocks. This particular painting has around 100 color blocks. The more color blocks there are, the more time it takes to complete the painting. I use primarily Windsor Newton artist color oil paints, and my trusty #2 Holbein painting knife to apply the paint.

    Since I am a colorist and my paintings are about the interaction of color one might ask how I chose the colors in a painting. I begin a painting with a thought of how I want a painting to feel. Is it intended to be light and airy? Perhaps deep and rich and a feeling of abundance, the way I feel now at Thanksgiving. Sometimes I am given a color swatch from a designer, and I incorporate the colors in the swatch along with the colors that will create the intended feeling for the particular placement in an interior.
    It is intensely satisfying to pull off the masking tape  and reveal the color with its crisp edges.

    As I am working on a painting, there are occasional mishaps. Some can be seen on this image where a color block has some patchy qualities. In this case, I am painting over some of the blocks that were initially planned with spring hues and will be resolved as the painting continues.