2:52 PM: i didn’t like the face & neck of the skateboarder in this painting, so i painted over them and repainted them, as well as some work on his helmut & chin strap.
other tweaks: i added to the blue surrounding his body & gave more definition to his thigh.
BELOW: yesterdays version on the left, and on the right, how the painting looked following my tweaks today
how his face looks following my tweaks
4:03 PM: following my last 2:52 pm post i did a bit more work on tokyo olympics 15 where, as promised, more figures and patterns have entered the picture. it needs more work, but is definitely on it’s way to join the rest of the series. stay tuned, as tomorrow may well be a critical day for both 14 & 15.
2:52 PM: today i placed tokyo olympics 14 & 15 side by side on my east wall and went back & forth between the two.
both paintings will eventually integrate with more shapes & figures, making it less specific and more of a dance, like the rest in this series, where the space is playfully intermixed with patterns and colors that allow the eye to move about the surface as though on a journey.
4:22 PM: i started the drawing for tokyo olympics 15 earlier today. i’m still undeciided about whether otr not to do more work on the super-spare tokyo olympics 14, but i’m leaning towards doing a bit more, but not tooo much.
4:13 PM: as i went through some of the works on paper sitting atop my file cabinet waiting to be organized, i came across this plein air gouache on 2 pieces of paper of the san luis valley, where we live. it was painted in 1999, but of course it feels like ancient history.
san luis velley, 8x45” 1999, gouache on 2 pieces of paper
1:47 PM: i’m making the drawing for tokyo olympics 15. until i’m further along, here’s a quote from ˆmatisse:
you must understand that what i paint are objects thought of in plastic terms: if i close my eyes, i see the objects better than with my eyes open, free of accidental detail; that is what i paint.
DETAIL: day 1 of tokyo olympics 14
3:20 PM: i made a tiny addition to tokyo olympics 12, giving the little guy on the lower right a mike,and strated tokyo olympics 14, which for the moment is delightfully spare & painterly.
1:40 PM: today i did more work on the two most recent paintings in my tokyo olympics series of paintings.
i started with the most recent: tokyo olympics 13, which i felt needed something more in the lower portion of the composition, but not too much. so i drew in some creek rocks and branches, which i think work but may need to be bolder than the sketchy pencil lines i drew in. i think they also add a note of mystery, placed as they are beneath the skateboarder & the acrobat doing a handstand. as is true with the others in this series, it’s up to the viewer to fill in the blanks.
as for tokyo olympics 12, i had gone over the entire painting 2 days ago with a thin coat of light yellow and wsa waiting for it to dry sufficiantly for me to go back in without my brush picking up too much of that yellow.
it’s a totally different composition now, although, as i intended, the previous version, which i painted over, does peek through as a ghost image, adding richness and mystery.
so now, the composiiton has three singers, who played a key role in the post-olympic games celebration.
1:04 PM: i got an early start today, so when it couded over & started snowing half an hour ago, i was pretty much done for the day. as you will see below in the before & after photos, this is now a totally different composition, with only a very few elements left from yesterday.
it definitely looks more like it’s title: tokyo olympics 13! let’s see where it goes tomorrow.
BELOW: tokyo olympics 13 yesterday (left) and just now
3:48 PM: sure doesn’t look like tokyo olympics! but this is just day one, and it will transform tomorrow. i love the colors so far. it’s inspired, at this early stage, by a, 18th c. japanese woodblock print, which i find very moving in it’s unassuming, innocent intimacy.
3:51 PM: i added one more piece of collaged paper, this time a piece of a pen & ink drawing, just below the flowers on the upper left.
1:53 PM: i changed the title of space g-1 to tokyo olympics 12 after working on it today. i just felt that it’s more accurate, not to mention convenient. i’ve been having difficulty lately collaging paper onto the paintings, so i stopped for a while. but this most recent one really demans a couple of collaged elements. so i watched a short video giving some tips, which i think worked! i flipped the painting previously called space g-1 180° and collaged 2 pieces of a map, eliminating the mother with her child but keeping the male figure holding a mike, who is now in the lower right quadrant.
i think it worked! the piece of map you see in the upper right corner functions optically almost like a window, which adds the depth i felt was missing from the composition.
BELOW: tokyo olympics 12 as it looked yesterday (left) and moments ago following my changes
3:27 PM: i’m a little nervouse because it’s snowing heavily and mikela is out at the school, so she’ll be driving home in poor conditions. i have a call in to her to see if she can leave earlier than planned so she doesn’t have to drive on icy roads after dark.
i’ve been working on space-g 1 all day. i took out the enigmatic figure in the upper right and fooled around with various solutions, scraping & rubbing solvent on areas that needed to go. i think it’s sort of in a good space right now.
3:50 PM: i made a few additions to tokyo olympics 11 this morning. then i cur 4 new pieces of canvas, all the same size as the tokyo olympics series, and started work on a new series, titled space-g. the g stands for gallery, and the paintings are inspired by photos i shot from above at a space gallery opening some years back. this is the gallery where i show my work in denver, and where i receently had an exhibition.
a mother holding her child stands next to a vase of flowers and a second figure is on the upper right. it’s intentionally not clear what that figure is doing, but the forms give you hints, and the viewer will have to determine what’s going on up there. the floor at space does not have the pink and red patterning you see in the painting, so it’s kind of a mix of reality and fantasy.
not sure right now whether i’ll do more tomorrow. maybe.
