12:07 PM: I decided not to mess with 8/24/2021 painting/collage, which i’ve been painting for the past few days. it needs to ferment & ripen while I work on other things. it’s slowly dawning on me that my style of painting demands an indeterminate period of what i’m calling fermentation. this allows me to release any attachments I may have to a particular passage or indeed to the entire composition. and moving from that piece to one that’s been fermenting for a period of time is the ideal way to accomplish that.
so today it was the turn of tokyo olympics 1, painted and collaged on 2 joined canvases, each 16x20.” I last worked on it august 17. 11 days is a good period of time for the fermentation I spoke of to occur. it was descriptive, in the very sense matisse indicated when he said “the ensemble is our only ideal. details lessen the purity of the lines and harm the emotional intensity; we reject them.”
in gazing at the previous version, we witness a composition dominated by details. the jumping skateboarder; the crouching basketball player….in todays version, the ensemble matisse speaks of matters most. another way of putting it: my hand trumps my mind. the viewers eye glides over the painting surface, rather than getting stuck on one element or another, and silently confirming: “oh yes, that’s a tree trunk, that’s a jumping skateboarder, etc.”
tokyo olympics 1 as it appeared moments ago following an hour of painting this morning
tokyo olympics 1 as it looked last time I worked on it: august 17th , 3pm