Melancholia

A change of pace. I've been working on a portrait to give as a gift
and it's been a painstaking process to get a likeness and still have the
paint look fresh so I switched gears and indulged in thick paint!

Predator

I almost gave up on this a few times . . . there was so much information
with orange reflections bouncing all over the plate, cast shadows, and
"wrinkles" of light and dark in the plate itself, I had to simplify a bit. The
fork had a very complex reflection as well as shadow and it got the best
of me—had to leave it out. My first version was very sedate and boring.
When I worked at it again, my intention was to break the boundaries of
the objects and the only way to do that was take the setup down and eat
the peaches. When I'm looking at something, I become a slave to the literal.
So I used the first version as a roadmap and painted over it focusing my
attention on the painting surface rather than what I was painting. It seems
to be the only way to go beyond my "little self" as Suzanne Stewart says.
Before I paint a still-life I usually spend a little time looking at Stanley Bielen.
The painting I've linked here is tiny—8.5 x 7 but in its simplicity, it feels
monumental. He's all about the paint.

Three Pears

I've been working really hard (struggling) with figures on 16 x 20.
Don't know yet if there's improvement with them but thought I'd tackle a
small still-life for a change of pace. I feel pretty pleased with this and it
gave me some much needed respite from struggle—wondering if the
figure paintings taught me something after all, even if they're not up
to snuff. I tried to work slowly, no swash-buckling strokes (but tried to
make them look like it), was judicious with a very narrow aim: just make it
look lit. It took a few tries with different color background darks to make the
lights pop but mostly it was fun!

Tangerine Tree 2

Another pose from the tree. I'm learning a lot from working on a
subject that has a sort of overall pattern. There's so much information
that I can't focus on individual objects but instead, be more aware
of the entire surface. I'm still trying to stifle my overactive left-
brain tendency to put in everything I see. My intention for a long time
now, has been to flip my brain so that my painting is more about
mark-making, color relationships and light patterns than about rendering
individual objects. I've not yet been successful with that and part of it, I've
realized recently, is that I don't always work with an awareness of that
intention. I seem to slip, unaware, back into unconsciousness and trying
much too hard to render again and again. Still engaged in that dialog with
myself about "paint what you see." Remembered a picture book I'd
bought for my daughter many years ago—there was an apparent scene
that everyone seemed to see immediately, but if you altered your focus,
crossed your eyes and concentrated on different elements in the pattern,
the scene would shift to something entirely different. An apparent forest
could shift completely to a school of fish or something like that. This is
such an intriguing concept and makes me wonder what I'm missing in
what I'm seeing with my "regular" eyes. A new intention to add: when
looking at anything, to try to see beyond the objects and actually focus
on color relationships and light patterns. This is probably so obvious
but I can be so slow to get stuff, even stuff I know intellectually. Terry
Miura writes about his process with representation and how he tries
to go beyond the actual: http://terrymiura.blogspot.com.

Tangerine Tree

The best thing about South Texas is that after a hellacious summer
of drought and sauna-like temperatures, we're rewarded with trees
bearing fruit! And rain, finally! Happy Holidays y'all and all the
best in the new year!

Oranges/Hydrangea 2

This is the last of the surviving oranges pose. I've been working
on several panels and a canvas, revisiting whatever is dry and
whenever I have some inkling of what to try, mostly color-wise.

Lemons/Hydrangea

I splurged this week and bought flowers to paint and felt
really excited. I had some great starts where everything flowed
and looked great value-wise and then I started struggling with
color–got too heavy-handed and I was afraid they'd die before
I "got it." I photographed them all to try another day. My
admiration for people who can paint flowers has grown tremendously.
My lesson was that I really needed to focus on subtlety: practice
tiny color & value shifts, experiment with whites, thick and thin
paint and make edges disappear. So wonderful that the challenges
in painting are endless!

This 8 x 10 panel seemed so small when it was white and then so
huge once there was paint on it . . .