6:12PM: my love for earth colors is evident throughout my work. they give me a deep satisfaction. when i'm out at the creek painting plein air, they are everywhere i look. introducing a a red or pink or green, as i've done in parade 29, is literally a thrill. during my 15 years in greece i absorbed much of the restrained byzantine aesthetic, where earth colors dominate. upon closer examination, i began to see the aliveness and passion beneath those seemingly tight, formulaic works. it's more apparent in the frescos, where each section needed to be painted in a white heat, while the surface was still wet. in the finest examples, which i saw during my week long stay at stavronikita monastery on mt. athos, or the holy mountain, a startling freedom in the brush strokes can be seen.
3:29PM update: this is as far as i got today. the space is, as i predicted yesterday, slowly beginning to organize itself. it's becoming clear we are looking at something from above, but we're still not sure what. and may never be. after all, not many can imagine they are looking at MOMA visitors going up the stairs through the geometry of a helicopter suspended above them. of course, as i keep saying, that is irrelevant, since what we're looking at really is a PAINTING; a series of marks, in this case brush strokes, on a surface which, if successful, dance together and delight the eye and the spirit. and satisfy ones aesthetic sensibility.
i am also EXTREMELY frustrated by my iMac! some days, like today, it goes really really slow and keeps giving me the spinning wheel. it's past it's prime, so we're going to order a new one and use this for it's screen. gotta go home & chill....more perhaps later.
12:23PM update: SLOW and STEADY is my mantra today. this painting is revealing itself to me stage by stage & definitely does not want me to rush it. so i just made myself some oatmeal and am eating it while contemplating the work i did over the past hour, in the upper right quadrant.
9AM update: i'm about to meditate and will leave for my studio & resume work on parade 29 about 11am. i've been thinking about it all night, moving bits of the painting about in my head. it's a challenging painting, and will have an important effect on the future parade series paintings. it occurred to me that some of the minor difficulty i experienced yesterday in brushing on the colors may be due to one factor:artfix, the french company the produces this portrait linen, recommends very lightly sanding the surface before painting, so that the colors adhere more easily and smoothly. i neglected to do that with this one. so i may go back in to th unpainted areas with extra fine sandpaper to see if it really makes a difference. more soon...........
watch addiction news:
i'm currently selling one of my favorite watches, a Dievas Shadow, on eBay to finance the purchase of a ball master engineer diver GMT. the ball watch will arrive tomorrow or friday, depending on east coast weather conditions, and the dievas auction ends saturday at 11:15am PST. the link to my eBay sale, item #321682461320 is: http://www.ebay.com/itm/321682461320?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
both watches are "tactical," with a bold, aggressive stance. the shadow, designed to withstand water submersion to 500 meters, has unique materials & design. the ball, water resistant to 300 meters, has a GMT function, allowing you to tell the time in a second time zone, indicated by the red arrow, at a glance.. both have convex sapphire crystals with anti-reflective coating. ball's tritium gas tubes make the watch easy to see at night, and the brightness doesn't fade after an hour or so, as with the super luminova coating on the shadow. the tritium tubes will however very gradually grow dimmer over a period of 25 years.
have you seen sawyer frederick's stunning performance on the voice? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFH9LQLGNbk