In October 2026, two of my paintings hung in Belgrade, Serbia. They were part of The Eight Art Encounters, a group exhibition at the House of King Peter I Cultural Center. The exhibition ran from October 21 to October 31, and it was extended past its closing date into the first days of November.

The two works were Fragment 05 and Fragment 06 from my Apogee series. They are the smallest paintings in the series, each 8 by 8 inches. Both are oil on rabbit skin glue and canvas. Rabbit skin glue is a traditional ground, the same preparation painters have used for centuries under oil paint. On a surface that small, every decision shows. There is nowhere for a weak passage to hide.

Apogee is a young series. I started it in July 2026, after a five week trip to Italy in May and June. The paintings show the human figure seen from the feet, foreshortened, the way figures are painted on the ceilings of Italian frescoes. The large works in the series measure 48 by 48 inches. Fragments 05 and 06 belong to the first group of smaller paintings, where the idea was tested at an intimate scale before it grew.

Fragments 05 and 06 are part of a group of six small paintings that opened the series. Fragments 01 to 04 are slightly larger, 14 by 11 inches, worked in ink, acrylic, and oil on canvas. The six small works share one problem: how much of the foreshortened figure can a small surface hold before the image breaks. Each small painting answers it differently. Two of those answers were the ones I sent to Belgrade.

A group exhibition does something a solo exhibition cannot. It puts your work in a room with the work of other painters and lets the differences speak. Two small paintings have to hold their own by intensity, not by size. That is a fair test for a new series, and it is a test I wanted for these two. They were painted to be looked at closely, and a group show is a room full of close looking.

The Eight Art Encounters has now closed, and the two paintings are coming back to Dallas. The series continues in the studio. The large Apogee canvases are where the idea is heading next, and the small Fragments remain its starting point, now with a Belgrade exhibition in their history.

When the paintings are back in the studio, they return to the series they belong to, and their history travels with them. A painting that has been exhibited abroad carries that line in its record permanently. For a series that is only a few months old, Belgrade was an early and serious first outing.

The full series, including Fragments 05 and 06, can be seen on the Apogee series page. The story of how the series began is in my post Apogee: Painting the Figure From the Feet. The paintings themselves are listed in my store.