2:44 PM: this morning we were at the charter school working with the kids. so i arrived at the studio relatively late, at around 2 pm. I felt, when i revisited it, that 2-26-17 creek scroll needed something to unite the upper and lower areas. BELOW is a comparative view of how it looked before and after.
there was a flash of inspiration, and it let me know what to do. i wasn't sure it would work, because i had to use a broad brush saturated with color, and i wasn't sure the fragile japanese paper would take it without tearing. i lay the painting down on my big work table and just did it, first shaking the wet brush out on my cement floor. one of the great advantages of having a dedicated studio with a cement floor is that you don't worry about drips and splashes of paint. the more they happen the more the floor gains character.
lucien freud, the great british figure painter who was the grandson of sigmund, would regularly wipe his palette knife on his studio wall. after his death, photos of that wall show how beautiful it had become; a textured mosaic of freud colors.
10:20 am: Photo of the late great Karagiozis (shadow theatre) player Sotiris Spatharis. I shot this in his Plaka workshop, where he made figures like the one he's holding. My studio at the time was a short walk away, and I visited him frequently.