Just what kind of art do I want to make? I think that the best way to answer this, for now, is to quote from my final "artist's statement" from school, where I talk about the relationship between a painting's color scheme and the "world-view" that it concretizes:

"The artist whose work most consistently exemplifies the antithesis of the color effect which I want to achieve is probably Rembrandt.  A great many of Rembrandt’s paintings feature a bright, warm light, shining forth in a world of frigid darkness.  Light, animate and ethereal, is the focus, the 'figure,' confined to a small area and incidental touches; the general area, the 'ground,' is corporeal, heavy, inert.  The effect, to me, is that of a spiritual energy which, through an enormous effort, is able to break free of the stifling, suffocating weight of the material world.  This effect strikes me as being consistent with the world-view of one of the most influential philosophers in western history: Plato.  In Raphael’s School of Athens, Plato points toward the sky, away from the earth, symbolizing his belief that the world we perceive is but the shadowy reflection of a supernatural dimension that is perfect and non-material. Plato held that we should renounce every pleasure of this world in an attempt to transcend it and glimpse the nature of true reality--and, since the imperfect sub-reality within which we find ourselves trapped is inherently inimical to such an undertaking, that the attempt will necessarily be torturous.

The opposite approach--my approach--is to switch the focus: to present matter as the figure, matter situated in a universe of light.  Here the larger area will be bright and vivid, and the objects which we are to focus on will be dark and dull.  (Visually, such an arrangement occurs when one is facing a light source and looking at the shadow side of an object--that is, when the object is back-lit.)  The effect, so it seems to me, is also the opposite: the universe is open, expansive, dazzling.  It presents no obstruction to effort; it invites, and even demands, activity, and more--it promises that such activity will be free and natural rather than stilted and strained.  The figure-as-matter, in such an environment, is solid, fleshly, and--perhaps surprisingly--buoyant, buoyant in a universe that is overflowing with energy.  And this effect strikes me as being consistent with the world-view of that philosopher who is, fundamentally, the antipode of Plato: Aristotle.  Raphael portrays Aristotle extending his hand downward, toward the earth.  According to Aristotle, reality doesn’t get any realer than this; the world as we see it is real, stable, knowable. Consequently he believed the essence of life to be, not renunciation, but fulfillment--which requires a focus on the world, the material world as perceived by the senses, and action within it. The "good life" as projected by Aristotle demands effort, but not suffering; if man’s interests concern the understanding of a knowable universe, then the universe cannot be inimical to his interests."

As a very primitive example of "my" kind of color scheme, I can offer this quick study I did several years ago. (It's based on a photograph by Paul Lange, by the way, who I think is a very skilled photographer.)