pink creek, 32x32”/ purple rock II, 36x38” & spring creek, 48x20” were all worked on today
pink creek at the end of my painting day today
2:26 PM: i started out thinking i’d go out to the creek to paint plein air, since this is likely the last warmish day for a while, with a cold front moving in tomorrow. but it clouded up & the wind picked up, so conditions were not ideal by the time i had my materials ready.
so i continued work on purple rock II, spring creek & pink creek, which i hadn’t worked on for a few years. the latter was part of a series of collaged abstractions i was working on in 2017.it had a lot of white canvas, which i took advantage of, introducing siena in the upper right & the branch which has become a familiar presence in many of the recent abstracted creek-scapes. the blue on the lower left is a fragment of a map of greece; one of the many maps i was collaging into my paintings at the time.
in purple rock II, on the LEFT, mainly the right side of the composition was worked on, whereas in spring creek, the hole in the central portion of the composition was, i think, resolved. they are all candidates for my show, opening may 30th, and should be dry enough to transport to the gallery a week from this saturday, which is currently the plan.
9 am: after completely painting over purple rock II, then scraping & rubbing it all out, i was left with a kind of ghost image. it was interesting, but too faint. so yesterday i worked into it, adding some white water around the large central rock image , so that now it pops more. i’ll be heading over to the studio in an hour or so, and see how it strikes me. i realized yesterday i had made a mistake in my calculations and i do have a few more days to work on paintings destined for the show opening may 30th, since they won’t be leaving my studio for another 9 days. so i may start something new today, but it’s more likely i’ll use what i learned yesterday on some of the recent pieces that need a bit more pop.
BELOW: left: the painting yesterday post-rub & scrape, right: how it looked at the end of my painting day yesterday.
