3:39 PM: here's where i'm stopping for the day. if you compare with the image from the gremillion invitation below, you'll see what i meant in my 1:48 pm comments. the brush strokes in the painting thus far are much looser and the composition more abstract; in the sense that the whole picture plane is seen as a play of shapes and colors. they are given specificity and meaning by the context: a living room with 3 figures interacting. but the painting is no longer about this subject matter. rather, it's in a kind of dance. working straight onto the white primed portrait linen is making a huge difference. it's as if all those years of painting in oil on a tinted ground were foreplay, and now i'm having real sex.
1:48 PM: ABOVE is the current state of oil interior 1. i made a series of interiors in 1996, which were shown at the time in a solo show at gremillion & co. in houston. so why am i revisiting this subject, and interiors in general? first of all, i'm in the mood to paint interiors. and i'm curious to see what if anything has changed during those 20 years. i'm in the midst of working, so i'll say more later, but to begin with, the earlier versions were painted on a tinted ground, which is a hold over from byzantine art, as introduced to me during my 15 years in greece, by my mentor & dear friend, yannis tsarouchis.i stuck to that method of working in oil until recently, when i began making plein air paintings in oil on 16x16" canvasses. those were all painted on a white ground, which i found freeing. even daring! having the white canvas show through rather than the tan-ish ground i used ups the luminosity, as well as giving me the feeling of immediacy i experience with watercolor or gouache.
but i want to do a second round my fresh morning energy lasts, and i'll say more about this later.
11 am: i just completed the drawing for oil interior 1, which will be in oil on linen, 32x32" it's a larger version of gouache interior 1. below are 3 stages of the drawing. i'm about to squeeze my paints onto the palette, and will post pics as available.
