The United States Color & Learn series are paintings and drawings with a timeless quality based on American educational coloring books.

These paintings and drawings are a reflection of the fabric of our country, and take on a new sense of urgency within the context of current events. This Series is intended to be provocative: intended to make the viewer question and affirm views of the traditional American ideals of family, liberty, prosperity, progress, our institutions such as the military and current views of American power and our place in the world.

The common characteristic in all the works is a black line drawing filled in with different colors, the same process as is used with a coloring book. By removing the images from a coloring book context, that is, idealized imagery as educational tool, the iconography can be viewed as a child would see it (during their education) or, how the rest of the world sees the complex culture of the United States from a distance.

Because these images are based on common American iconography, the viewer will have had a personal experience, consciously or unconsciously--of many of them. Their associations, belief systems, and life experience will color their interpretation of the work. There is no one correct interpretation. In this regard, the viewer’s experience reflects American individualism. The United States Color & Learn is an on-going series. The show and series are like a random slide show of Americana. Each work is a fragment of American experience.

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