Roam started off as an abstract with no object to focus on. There are a lot of layers in this piece and after painting the first layer while waiting for it to dry, I hung it right in front of my work table where it stared me in the face... or I was staring at it, being the typical tortured artist fighting with myself over what direction the image was to go. I kept focusing on what is now the outline of the woman's cloak, but then it was just orange raindrop shapes painted over a collage. I kept envisioning a cloaked figure and could tell right where the face should go. Finally, I remembered the woman's face I had cut out of a magazine, and rifled through the small box of pictures I have for an occasion such as this. I found the face and quickly cut her into shape and decoupaged her into the scene. I then painted the outline of her cloak in red like I'd been imagining. After that I did one more layer of shapes, let it dry, and then a light brush with blue over the whole background.
Counting the dry time Roam took me two weeks to complete, as I was working with oils and in my spare time. All the while I was listening to The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand on CD, which happened to make it into my top ten list of favorite books of all time, and gave me a good reason to smile about naming my littlest Howard.:)