I Don't Start With a Plan. I Start With Color.

People ask what my process is when I stand in front of a blank canvas. The only intention at the start is to let the painting become what it needs to become.

The composition shows up later. The line work comes as it needs to and the writing that ends up scratched into the surface shows up as the work begins to take shape and house a story. 

One thing gets decided before any of that. The color.

That is the only real decision I make going in. And even that changes while I work.

This fall I looked at my own house

I pay attention to color all day in the studio. I noticed as we transitioned this year into fall that we needed a shake up. 

Nobody chose the color in the house I live in really except two of the rooms. Everything else is white. It came with the house and I left it there while everything else about our life moved on.

We needed a new palette. Something to calm the place down and give us a solid start going into the new year.

The paint I use

I work the studio with paint from Tomorrow's Artist. They take the leftovers, the bit of paint still sitting in other people's tubes and jars, and they recombine it. What comes out are colors no company would mix on purpose.

That is why I like it. Nothing in that palette is a standard studio color.

So I painted with it as I started thinking about this shift in color in my home. Then I held the work up next to the Behr color book.

It matched. The greens, the clays, the greys, the slate blues, the honey. Paint made out of other people's leftovers landed in the same place a room full of color professionals had predicted a year and a half earlier.

I did not expect that.

What they named this year

Let's just start by saying, I think a lot of this is just a marketing ploy. And I also appreciate it as a working artist. You need to move paint by getting people to paint their homes. So here's who picked what:

Pantone picked Cloud Dancer for 2026. A soft white, announced in December. First white they have ever chosen.

Sherwin-Williams went with Universal Khaki. Benjamin Moore went with Silhouette, which is burnt umber and charcoal together. Behr named Hidden Gem, a smoky jade, and built twenty colors around it.

The Behr set is the one I keep coming back to because it works across a whole house instead of one wall. Terracottas and warm neutrals for depth. Blues and greens for the tie to nature. A few deep ones when you want the room to have some weight.

They have already named next year too. Behr announced Grounded in August, an earthy olive. Sherwin-Williams announced Celery in September. Green is staying. The earth tones are getting deeper.

But I do believe the refresh changes you. It's like a living shift in your practice towards your growth. Chose whatever you want the vibe to be. 

What color does

A room has a mood, and that mood works on the people living in it. Change the wall and you change how everybody moves through the house. What the mornings feel like. Where people end up sitting.

It is one of the cheapest changes you can make and one of the biggest.

Most of us live with white and stop noticing. I did it too, and I look at color for a living.

My new blue work has really created a whole new style for me this year. 

Collectors already know this

Real collectors rarely hang everything they own. They keep work in storage and rotate it. Every year something comes down and something else goes up.

They do it because a painting you have walked past four thousand times has gone quiet on you. Taking it down is not disrespect to the piece. It is how you keep it alive.

I do a version of this in the studio. If a painting is finished and it is not working, I paint over it. Some have been painted over three or four times. I do not agonize about it. That painting becomes the next one.

You can do the same thing at home without painting over anything. Once a year, walk your rooms and look at the art. Notice what still holds you and what has gone flat. Move what has finished its job.

The book

I put all of it into a lookbook I thought you might like. 

16 colors from the Behr 2026 palette, each one paired with an original painting, shown in an actual room so you can see how the wall and the canvas work on each other. Fourteen paintings. Every one links to its page.

It covers which colors settle a room down, which ones carry weight, what goes with what, and how to pick a piece at the size a wall actually needs.

Download Colors of the Moment 2026

Go look at your own walls this week. Not a glance. Actually stand there and look. Most of us stopped seeing them a long time ago.