DETAIL of sparse reflections
1:12 PM: i’m continuing work on sparse reflections, which is no longer as sparse. i worked on it for a few hours, knowing all the while that most of what i was doing would be wiped out towards the end of the day. and sure enough, just prior to my mentee k. arrived at 2, i wiped most of what i’d done out, leaving what you see BELOW.
DETAIL of sparse reflections after todays intervention; kind of a cool passage, no?
3:52 PM: sparse reflections was a bit too sparse. so, after gazing at it since i last worked on it, 5 days ago, and after waiting 3 days since my calf surgery, i decided to jump in. did i jump in too soon & delay healing of the wound? maybe. i’ll see when i take the bandage off tonight & see if there was any bleeding.
but back to the painting. after a full days work, it looks quite a bit different than the others, although obviously of the same family. i went into it with no real plan other than to create more coherence in what seemed to me to be an image without a center of focus. scattered. dispersed. confusing & unsettling to the eye.
so was i successful? yes & no. yes, if you look at the two below, in that todays version, on the right, does give the viewer somewhere to hang his/her hat. no in that, although there are a number of beautiful passeage, the painting’s identity is still not entirely clear. after 4 days of inactivity, my mind cut in when it shouldn’t have. and my legs began to ache, unused perhaps to standing on the cement floor for a good part of the day.
BELOW: on the left is an earlier iteration of the sound of a flute series, and on the right is the most recent one, illustrating the evolution of the work in the direction of simplicity & spareness.
3:15 PM: it’s best to stay off my feet, so instead of returning to the 78x26” taiga inspired oils, i sat at my work table and made a small gouache study of a taiga scroll. it was interesting to shift to a much smaller scale, and to gouache on paper. it was a good day and, that being said, i can’t wait to get back to the larger oils. i feel like i’m in the groove with that series; that my learning increases dramatically with each successive painting. i may take some of the recent completed ones back to the house, and switch them out with the earlier ones, which may be subject to tweaks in the direction of simplification. see the two examples ABOVE.
1:11 PM: i’m supposed to stay off my feet as much as possible today following squamous surgery yesterday on my calf. the main reason is to allow healing to take place without stressing it out, and so that the stitches remain intact. i think i can go back tomorrow, taking frequent breaks & avoiding anything that might put too much pressure on my calf.
Before heading to Salida for the surgery on tuesday afternoon, i was able to do some work on emerald ripples. it seemed too spare. so, as you can see i added some rock shapes below & areas of pale pink/ochre & grey, which give more movement & coherence, giving new meaning to the delicate mountain marks on the upper third of this painting.
right now,i have such energy for making these paintings, i feel like i’d like to have a few dozen of these 78x26” canvases stretched & ready to paint. it’s certainly a possibility, but would requie lots of time & money. the artfix portrait linen, which comes in 84”x 5 or 10 yard rolls, is very costly, and stretching each one is time consuming. this long, narrow shaped canvas usually requires some re-stretching to deal with the inevitable wrinkles in the fine linen simply due to the shape, as opposed to a more square shape, where it’s easier to equalize the pressure as you pull the linen tight with the wide stretching pliars & fasten it with the staple gun.
back to work tomorrow? lets see. my ankle is still pretty swollen post-op, so as instructed, i’m lying down & keeping it above the level of my heart.
DETAIL of emerald ripples at 3:30pm
emerald ripples 78x26” at 3:30pm today
3:11 PM: i needed to give sparse reflections a few days break before doing anything more, so i started a new one, titled emerald ripples. like sparse reflections, it’s painted on the white quadruple primed portrait linen, which actually has a slightly yellowish-greyish tint. as it turns out, this is a very good thing for the work i’m doing, making it possible to make marks that retain their sensitivity without jumping off the surface, which they would do if it were dead white. it’s also great timing for what’s going on with my vision. before the cataract surgery i wouldn’t have been able to discern these fine tonal variations, since i couldn’t perceive anything that was dead white!
i’ll have a short painting day tomorrow, as we have to drive to salida for minor surgery on a lesion on my calf which biopsied as squamous cell.
12:04 PM: we walked up the creek at 6am & got up at 5:20am, so it was with some trepidation that i went back into sparse reflections. i started it yesterday and by the end of the day felt it may have been resolved. i was hesitant about disturbing the white space.
BELOW are before & after images. as you can see, a very pale blue has appeared in the upper portion of the painting, suggesting sky & clouds, as well as a pale pink in the middle areas. i think it works, and that it’s a better painting now. your eye assembles the discreet elements; the marks, more coherently whilst maintaining the painting’s mystery.
DETAIL of sparse reflections at 3 pm
3:31 PM:
there’s no way of accurately predicting the arrival of a storm here in crestone/baca. so as i write this, the rain has become torrential. as often happens in tropical climates, the sun could and probably will emerge before sunset. of course we are not a tropical climate. far from it! but, especially at this time of year, the monsoon brings many surprises.
i worked on sparse reflections until about an hour ago, when the thunder started, the cloud cover thickened and there was not enough natural light to paint. natural light is always my preference.
i’m continuing to paint on the white quadruple primed linen with no toned ground beneath. the priming is not dead white on this portrait linen; rather it has a yellowish cast. and as a result the marks are not as harsh as they might be on a pure white ground.
i expect that tomorrow will bring greater unity to this somewhat fragmented composition, with some large areas on tone bringing forth the calligraphic marks & bonding them into one coherent whole. maybe.
at work this morning on sparse reflections
12:02 PM:
so today i was able to start painting again, after about a one week interruption. i like having two canvasses to work on, so that i can switch between the two when it feels right. i have to be fresh, and today i do feel fresh & energized. we had planned on resuming our trail walks this morning at 6 but put it off until tomorrow morning. i mention this because usually we both feel especially energized when we’re taking our trail walks every other day.
i’m starting this one, as you can see on a completely white ground. i may be adding a toned ground later in the day. visit this site throughout the day for updates.
4:56 PM: today my mentee, k. came over & started a new painting. while he was at work, i stretched two 78x26” canvases for the 8th & 9th paintings in my kyoto series. i should be able to start painting tomorrow morning following a break i had to take after my cataract surgery last tuesday & our trip to basalt & aspen.
it will be my first real opportunity to find out how the removal of the second cataract will affect my work. i’m still in disbelief at how white the ehites are, but i won’t really be able to tell how my color perception will shift in my paintings until i actually start putting brush to canvas. so stay tuned & tomorrow promises to be an interesting, if not a landmark day.
11:12 AM: yesterday i had a couple of doctors appointmnets in denver & boulder. one of them was with my dental surgeon, and while waiting to be called in, i made this drawing. as you know if you follow this blog, i make drawings when we travel, and my favorite venues for that are doctors waiting rooms, where you have a captive audience of people who are doing exactly that: waiting. i won’t continue this metaphor right now, but…
in 2015 i was making a series of paintings titled gaze, inspired by vermeer. sitting in my friend dan’s living room waiting for mikela to return from her hair appointment so we can leave for a lunch meeting in aspen, i was perusing images on my 256gb thumb drive, which i always cary with me. i ran across this one of a painting in the early stages of development.
2:52 PM: while i think the study of a qing dynasty painting i’ve been working on for the past 3 days was interesting & i learned a lot, i was ready today to collage over it. but we all know what lies buried underneath.
watches, which have appeared in many of my collages in the past have resurfaced here, along with bits of a plein air gouache & maps. i like the pink & blue with the stripe of red, as well as the suggestive phallic shape on the lower red. my signature can be found in the upper quadrant, and is from the day i made the plein air gouache landscape, pieces of which have found their way into the composition.
