The Annunciation These works, much like the previous ones, consist of two large canvases and related smaller paintings and works on paper. However, the large paintings were done according to a significantly different process. The previous large paintings were all painted over a warm ochre or sienna tone, which provided a certain unity of warmth as well as a middle tone, at least in the beginning stages of the paintings. In these canvases I created an underpainting with expressionistic painterly abstractions of intense colors and shapes with little or no reference to the final composition. The composition with figures grew from the abstract pattern already existing on the canvas. Much of the original abstract elements remain visible particularly in the background and subordinate areas. These colors were also placed directly over the white ground, which gives more luminosity to the colors. This change occurred essentially because I interrupted my series of large figure paintings to concentrate on still life paintings and I developed this expressionist approach to them and carried it over to my next series of figure paintings. Because these paintings grew organically out of an abstraction, the subject of the Annunciation developed in the later stages of the paintings and more as a discovery of inherent content rather than as one intended. I wanted the models to not be passive, but I wanted a dramatic and physiologically charged interaction between them. As the poses developed, it seemed in both compositions one figure is announcing something to the other and the other figure receives the information thoughtfully. It was also much later in the process of painting that I noticed in the abstract shapes in the background what appeared to be wings behind one of the announcing figures. I slightly completed the wings and the subject of the paintings then became obvious. I basically recognized that I had painted two Annunciation paintings without intending to.