Witnessing Mortality


This aint no winnah !
Yes. It is dying. And it is agonizing in the process. Can you feel the pain? I can hear the painting groan as I am trying to force it to become something. Funeral services for this piece of paper will be quick and succinct. (I hope that isn’t redundant)

For two days you have watched this painting try to be something. I put together an idea in my mind about building luminosity into the painting using multiple glazes of but three colors. The object with luminosity is to attempt to allow the saturation (intensity) of a color glow in the presences of more neutralized tones. What can ruin such a goal is the appearance of strident darks. And, habits can ruin one, too.

Intensity contrast is much more subtle than value contrast. Because we are animals, our eyes always go to the locale of the most value contrast . . . and as painters, we have been trained to use *value contrast,* usually. While I have a clear, idea of my goal in my head about not allowing value contrast to become the basis for this painting attempt, that is precisely what has happened. I allowed habit to take over !! It is now a value contrast painting and I am in too deep to change it. (Don’t look now, Mike, but the neon “duffus” sign in your studio is flashing . . . .over and over!)

So, here are today’s efforts, meager though they may seem. When working with ultra thin veils of color over one another, it takes up precious time . . .lots of it . . . .so, three studio days have elapsed without much of a result. Believe it or not, there are 20 plus hours in this painting. (mind you, other artists would bestow sainthood onto the piece because of the time spent . . .and never throw it out.) I, however, see only that I just became 20 plus hours older. The paper isn’t precious, but the lessons taught are, indeed, precious. During the funeral service, I will mumble some homage to those lessons while I grab for another piece of paper to move on to the next thing. This was only an experiment,

What was the big lesson, you ask? Not having a vision and a plan on paper to begin with. You know what ‘they’ say. Failure to plan is a plan to fail. Next time, I will define my shapes more carefully in sketches and know precisely where my gradations and intensity changes will lie on the paper. That is to say I will KNOW where . . . . .not ‘sort of have an idea’ of where.

Hats off, everyone. Show some respect for the patient, please! This is a terminal case, for sure!

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