2:12 PM: now that i successfully made a painting on top of an older one i wasn’t satisfied with, i’m moving more in that direction. i check first to make sure mikela agrees i’m not destroying one that should be a keeper before moving ahead.
so i went over 2 paintings with a light wash of titanium white & brilliant yellow and then started my drawing using a fat black oil stick.
BELOW are #6&7, stages 1 & 2. 2021 creek oil 6, on the left, hasn’t yet had any color introduced into the composition. whereas in 2021 creek oil 7 reds and blues have been introduced. i love going back & forth between 2 paintings like this. i’ve departed from the photos of students seated on the school lobby floor, and moved on to photos i shot a ten years ago in the then (2009) new athens acropolis museum, which was designed by bernard tschumi architects. amongst other interesting features, there’s a semi-transparent glass floor, which is what these visitors to the museum are standing on. it reveals the ancient temple ruins below the museum, and creates some very cool reflections and shadows. we went out on the terrace, which directly faces the acropolis, for lunch. if i go back to the original photos i shot, i know there’s lots more material to draw from.
i couldn’t make these paintings until a decade had passed and i had that all important, for me at least, distance.
i had about a 20 minute interruption about half an hour ago; every 3-4 months i get what’s known as an ocular migraine. it’d like a short lived misfiring in that area of brain connected to vision, that makes it hard to see; everything is scrambled. so it’s best to just sit & close your eyes for 15-20 minutes, and it’s gone. last one was december.
5:28 PM: this morning i chose 2 watercolor/collages for the BMCA open wall exhibition, opening march 27th. this photo shows the candidates i created to choose from. i decided on the 2, one atop the other, on the right, next to 2021 creek oil 5. they will be mounted on matt board and installed in square white frames, like the one you see just to the left of them. i chose htem in part because they are related in terms of color & composition, and because one contains a figure, which is becoming increasingly important in my recent work. in the two new oils i started today, for example,the human figure dominates the composition.