7:48 PM: and one final end of day move. i couldn’t leave the studio without lightening up that center-right passage. so i did, and the key turned out to be the vertical scrape marks i made, which read as more of the tree trunks but with a different spin than the others, providing a complexity & richness that pushes thiis painting into new territory.
2:20 PM: as you will read below, i had thought i was done with sixth month, at least for today. but that orage rock was bugging me. the more i looked, the more it seemed to unreasonably dominate the composition. know why? it was coming from my head, not my gut. so here’s the latest iteration, which i can’t promise will be the last for the day.
in a nutshell, my way of working could be encapsulated by the letters LSH, which stand for: letting stuff happen.
ABOVE: 2 DETAILS from sixth month, which i worked on this morning
11:35 AM: i got an early start today. one of the first things that caught my eye as i surveyed yesterdays work, thumbed through my taiga book & studies my printouts of creek photos i’ve taken over the past few years, was CANTON ROSE, a color created by williamsburg paints. i find it is unmatched by any of the oil colors i have at my disposal. and sixth month was just begging for it.
so i began brushing it horizontally across the canvas, using one of my many fan brushes. i also worked extensively on the lower 1/3 of the painting, aliminating some of the more obvious references to taiga’s paintings & introducing some rocks from north crestone creek.
i feel as though, perhaps, i need to give it a rest so as not to overwork it, & perhaps use the rest of my work day to stretch another 78x26 canvas, using the new 10 yard roll of linen that was delivered a few days ago. i want there to be enough indicators that a japanese audience familiar with taiga’s oeuvre would be able to get that he is the source of my inspiration for this series of paintings, and that they are 21st century loose interpretations. and i want that dream world taiga is so masterful at creating to translate as well.