a detail of parade 45 which i feel is especially well painted
2:16 pm: once again, mikela came through with very valuable feedback, allowing me to make some final all-important tweaks. on the right, the painting before today's changes. notice the area of flooring in the lower central portion. your eye keeps being drawn there because it's picking up an inconsistency. a hole in the patterning. on on the left, where this hole has been filled with dark tiles, the eye gains the freedom to wander freely and explore the rhythm of this Z like composition, which zigs down to the left from the top, then to the right and finally left again. additionally, i found the left arm of the figure with the yellow and red construction hat to be a bit anaemic, so i worked on that as well, plus a few other minor but critical details. all together, they make this painting sing when you see it in person, and i hope you do. if you've read my story page, you will recall what my kindergarten teacher in brooklyn said in her evaluation at the end of the year: philip seems fascinated by construction workers, she said. so when i found these guys in the denver science museum and photographed them from above, they were speaking to something deep within me. something i painted often in greece. and here they are again.
1:30 pm: i made myself a delicious brunch, while reading the awful news about the failure of the EU talks focused on the greek crisis. it was hard to get the food down thinking about what they will likely face starting next week. the entire debacle has been extremely unfair to the smaller economies such as greece, spain and italy, and the policies of austerity are counter-intuitive and have proven repeatedly to be counter-productive when it comes to building a sound economy.
5:30 am: this morning monsoonal clouds continued to cover the eastern sky , creating a beautiful sunrise when mikela and i took our 6 am walk.