Making The Geometric Series

The inspiration for this collection goes back to a piece I created earlier this year, Hangin’ On. This piece became a monochrome color blocked take on a bikini on a clothesline. I ended up really loving the color block style of this piece and was very inspired by the two tone look.

I was also very inspired by stripes and line work this year. Stripes definitely had a comeback moment this summer in fashion (although I’ve always been a fan of stripes). I knew I wanted to create more abstract paintings, but wanted some structure to the pieces. I explored some more stripes on pinterest for a while, but nothing sparked yet. 

I started seeing more photos of pools and tracks and really liked the linework and shapes they showed. I started studying more geometric inspiration before deciding to start painting and see where things went. 

I had several small canvases already available and thought a collection of minis would make the most sense for this time of year. I personally think art makes a great holiday gift, so I wanted to get this collection rolling and out before the holiday season ended. 

I had completed basically the entire collection and went to varnish each piece. This is where things went wrong. I’ve used a spray varnish before and had some issues, so I should’ve known something would happen. The spray varnish ended up leaving spots and large drips on almost all of the pieces. I’ve had an issue with varnish pooling before, which causes it to yellow. I could see this start to happen pretty quickly on some of the pieces and just wasn’t comfortable selling them. And to be completely honest, I felt like the collection was looking a bit all over the place. Each piece had a different look and it didn’t look very cohesive to me. So I decided to start over.

After deciding to restart the collection and only having a day until three of the pieces needed to be submitted to an art show, I drove right to my local Michael’s to panic shop. I originally only did sizes 4x4, 5x5, and 6x6, but I decided to switch things up (partially based on what the store had in stock). I ended up leaving with a bunch of 8x8, 6x6, and 5x5 canvases and hoped for the best. 

Once home, I laid out all the canvases on my studio floor, organizing them by size. One of the original pieces that I decided to keep was STAY IN YOUR LANE. Luckily this piece didn’t have any damage from the varnish. I really like the pool stripe style I created for this piece and decided to make more pieces of the same style. 

Another style from the original collection was what I like to call split stripe. One of the pieces I really loved got ruined, so I knew I was definitely remaking it. After selecting two styles, I decided I wanted to choose one more. I felt that this would offer a good number of options but still keep the collection looking like a collection. 

Because I was creating all of these paintings on square canvases, I wanted to incorporate squares somehow. I had previously made a piece with one square, which I liked but felt it was too simple. So I landed on layering squares as my final style. Once the three styles were settled on, I grouped the canvases based on which style would be created on each of them. 

Before I could start painting, I needed to color match two mixed paints I had run out of. Luckily, I had painted one of my skateboards the blue shade I needed to match, so I was able to paint on top of the board until the color matched. Don’t worry, this board will be getting repainted soon. Color matching took much more time and paint than originally expected. But I was finally able to get both the darker blue and green shades to match and I was ready to move forward. I also took this time to start writing “recipes” for my mixed shades. 

A couple other blue shades needed to get remixed too, but since I was starting over, those didn’t need to be exact. Frankly, these were also much easier to mix. Now, I was ready to start painting backgrounds. With the canvases sorted, I was able to then visualize the colors for each section and the collection as a whole. 

Each canvas got two coats of background color and needed to dry fully before I was able to add the design on top. To create each style, I used three different thicknesses of frog tape. Of course, this was when I ran into another snag. I’m truly not sure why or how, but the tape wouldn’t stick to one of the background colors. So those canvases were put aside (I’ll sand them down and use them for something else someday). My collection was definitely looking smaller than I originally wanted, but this was honestly for the best.

The first pieces I tackled were the three I set aside for an art show. I really liked the pool line design both visually and because it holds a lot of meaning to me. I decided to keep the three pieces the same style, in different colors. Originally, I also wanted them to be all the same size, but had to pivot when the tape wasn’t sticking. But I wanted them to be able to stand alone or be purchased together. KATIE, DAILY, and BUBBLES were born and after a long day I was off to bed.

For the rest of the collection, I had a few colors already picked out, based on what I had previously created. Otherwise, I just selected as I went and went with what felt right and what helped round out the collection. 

For just about all of my work, I tend to work in layers. This collection followed that tactic. For the square pieces, I painted one square, let it dry, and then added the next on top. For the pool line pieces, the vertical line was painted and then the horizontal line was added after. The split stripe pieces didn’t have any overlap, but they are painted on top of the background. My mom keeps saying they look like they’re taped on top (I think this just naturally happened). So this collection had a lot of painting and waiting, but I was able to tackle several pieces at once which made working on a time crunch easier. 

Overall, I was really happy with how this collection came out. I feel like I’ve started to find my style with it too (although my style will likely always be evolving). I love working with bright colors and creating abstract designs, but really liked the structure using geometric shapes added. This collection holds a lot of meaning too. Coming back to creating hasn’t necessarily been easy. But I’ve taken a lot of time to trust in myself and block out outside opinions and doubts that come with venturing out on your own. This collection symbolizes staying true to yourself and following your dreams. This may not be everyone’s favorite style of mine, but I love it and definitely plan to expand the series. To learn more about each individual piece, check out each listing in my shop. Stay tuned for more geometric pieces in 2026!