12:14 PM: this morning our trail walk was later than usual, and we stopped lower down the trail, at our old resting spot, where i’ve made many drawings. i was missing it! so i made a couple of drawings & took some photos of the site to share with you.
this morning’s creek drawing
paddlers on bright yellow hanging on our living room wall until the 19th, when we take it to aspen
we wanted to see what this one would look like hanging in our house, so just before our dinner guests arrived, i brought it over from the studio and hung it. in the simple, clean lines of the house, it looked way better than in my cluttered studio! lets see how it looks at aspen cmc.
11:03 AM: in order to leave time for the oil paint to dry, this is really my last opportunity to make any tweaks to the paintings for the show. mikela had pointed out an issue with the face of this hs girl seated in the school hallway, so this morning i corrected it.
i tweaked the face in this area of the painting this morning
3:06 pm: this is the trail drawing i made this morning, with the modification i just now made.
6:44 PM: over the past few days and probably through the weekend, i’ve been photographing and labeling the paintings bound for the aspen CMC exhibition, opening september 29. it’s the kind of thing i’m not great at but i’m doing the best i can…
3:04 PM: there was way too much going on in this composition, and the nude in the upper center didn’t work at all; she drew your eye and that was all you could see. so now she’s a ghost image; one of many in this new series i’m creating.
the two schoolgirls however remin ,albeit slightly simplified and more integrated into the whole composition.
the transparent glass floor of the acropolis museum now reigns in the upper half of the painting. the nude ghost image establishes ambiguous mystery, while the creek water and branches in the lower section suggest a theme running through my works for the past 2 decades.
the two hs students on the school hallway floor bring up a period when mikela and i frequented colorado schools, in this case denver, where we suppported students in artfully discovering and telling their stories.
ano kato acropolis museum III 78x16” post-tweaks
2:05 PM: once i finished the tweaks to ano kato acropolis museum II, i moved to ano kato acropolis museum III, which is a long narrow canvas, 78x16” this one combines images from the acropolis museum, a high school hallway and a crestone creek-scape, represented by the blue pool of water and branches on the lower portion of the composition, all viewed from above. a nude museum visitor with her back to us dominates the upper portion of the composition, with a seated school girl in about the middle. suggested at the very top are a couple of more museum visitors. from afar, this painting reads as a mysterious story, a kind of dream space, open to interpretation.
11:17 AM: there’s another very similar painting to the one i tweaked yesterday: ano kato acropolis museum II, which is 48x24”
this is the one i’m tweaking this morning. it’s tricky making changes to a painting that was originally done over a year ago. it’s also a lot of fun, ging places and using colors i wouldn’t have back then.
here’s where it’s at right now. i’m going to continue working & post a bit later.
4:07 PM: part of my prep for the aspen show involves tweaks to some older pieces, like this ano kato series painting inspired by photos i took in the acropolis museum, which at the time had just opened.
i added some highlights to their hair & clothing and gave more emphasis to the lights you see on the floor, which is transparent.
dwell, 17x80” following some tweaks i made this morning
2:16 PM: this morning i re-engaged with dwell, 17x80” i made a few additions to the cnetral portion of the composition, which break up the long horizontal with a blue triangular shape and a black rectanular one. now that i’m looking at it, i think something more is needed so i’ll posr once i do that.
12:11 PM: views of my studio & storage room with paintings that will be transported to aspen on september 20 and hung at cmc aspen in preparation for the opening on september 29.
this afternoon i started making tweaks to paintings for my aspen show. this one is in my ano kato series, titled school hallway 1. i felt it needed to pop a little more, so i added some lights in some areas. BELOW are the before (left) & after shots.
most noticeable is the blue book to the right of the seated girl on top. a few of the more subtle tweaks are: the face of the girl on top, as well as the greens of her jacket; the whites in the sneakers of the figure to the left, the white headband on the girl below as well as the whites of her shoes….
dwell as it looked moments ago following continued work this morning
1 PM: this morning i continued my modifications to dwell, 17x80”
this may be the most narrow composition i’ve created. the trick is to have it read as one integrated composition. if you look at the right and left crops BELOW, each half of this composition works by itself. i’m not yest certain about the composition as a whole though. it’s certainly better than it was…
dwell 17x80” after todays modifications
3:32 PM: this morning i continued preparing paintings for the aspen show, taping the edges, selecting the ones in frames under glass, etc.
i’ve been casting glances at dwell for weeks now, ever since i last worked on it, july 7. and finally, today, it’s turn has come. i did a fair amount, going over it with a thin layer of pinkish yellowish oils, then doing my usual scraping, blotting, rubbing, after which i began painting into it. it’s not singing yet, but if you listen carefully, you can hear some faint chirps. of course with my tinnitus, i hear ringing constantly, but that’s very different from singing!
that very wide expanse of canvas needed breaking up and, even after what i did today, it still does.
BELOW: dwell before & after todays modifications
1:50 PM: today it was the turn of handstand to join my latest paintings in losing detail and gaining melody. what do i mean by this? just have a look.
rather than being drawn into the figures, your eye now experiences a harmony of forms, colors and light with no beginning, no end; the stady movement of time reflected in these two circus figures is arrested in the midst of a melody. and it is that melody, which each viewer will hear differently that, more than anything, reflects my current state of being.
there’s no short cut to this place. i have to make one of these realist paintings containing figures without looking forward to the moment when the inspiration to transform them comes over me.
tricky.
but, after decades of making realist paintings in greece and during the period following my return to the states, i woke up to my essential artistic self. without making the realist work wrong, and after studying the masters i’ve always learned from, i recognized what it is that those masters i love have in common.
handstand a sit looked at 2pm today, following melodications
