One day last Spring.....
.....two artist friends called to say they were out painting and to show up if I was interested. I went. I found them under a tree 'for shade' and next to the restroom 'for the obvious' but with challenging subject matter to paint. Like, nothing within half a block but fields. Since I enjoy their company I stayed and did my best to find something, anything, for inspiration.
Well, you are looking at it. We live in/near a temperate rainforest. There is a lot of green. Sixty to one hundred foot walls of the stuff. So this became my 'Walls of Green' challenge.
No unusual premixed tube colors, just your normal red, yellow and blue in warm and cool versions of each, so the mixing had to be inventively done. I don't remember doing any pre-drawing on this one. Seat of the pants all the way.
Here is the first version of this that was headed for the scrape pile but I let it sit for a couple months in the corner of my studio staring at me like our cat in that irritating way when she wants to be fed:
Eventually I thought that it was too much in my face, demanding of attention. I changed it to make a softer painting with a greater feeling of distance in it. It still may not have arrived. I'm actually posting it because when things get posted prematurely I tend to get upset and will arrive at a solution much faster than if I just sit around with it staring at me in the studio. Besides, now at least you can see the crows.
I tell my students that some paintings demand a chicken. Perhaps, like Billy Collins says in one of his poems, it needs
"anything with cows, especially if they are standing
in a stream, their large, vacuous faces
staring into the warm, nineteenth century afternoon."
It's an idea.
Thanks for looking. Back later...
