Thursday, June 19, 2014

At Batterymarch

















I really enjoyed painting this in spite of running into problems along
the way. I felt I had a little more clarity on how to solve them, not
that clueless, frustrated feeling that sometimes descends. I'm working
towards a two-person show for next March and wanted to settle on a
subject that I could enjoy exploring for several months. I thought that
would be landscapes and took the Workman class to get a little more
knowledge under my belt. But as I looked at the landscape painters I
admire, it was clear they lived in rural areas, were immersed in their
environment and had all their senses engaged while making their
paintings. It made sense for me to switch to a city environment which
I am surrounded by. I'm feeling it's a good fit with a lot of varied
challenges ahead.

Just a note: My previous post "Rising" looks very bad in Blogger as
had the two paintings before that. It's very contrasty with the color
tending too cool whereas the actual painting and the photo of it is quite
soft with much more subtlety. The painting above looks great in
Blogger's preview but I'm holding my breath as I click "publish." I will
let you know in the next post if it's accurate. How do I correct this? Who
do you contact for help?

Monday, June 16, 2014

Rising






































This is a great old building on Galveston's industrial side that's seen better days.
I painted it over several weeks, starting out pretty literally, then set it aside for a
few days at a time until some "aha" moment came to me on what to do next. It
went through a lot of transformations over time each time emerging with less
spelled out and different color shifts. Now that I see it as a photo image, I'm
seeing more I could have done but it's time to move on.