sunset on 5/10/18 from our friend's house in edwards
2:41 PM: we returned last night exhausted after an intensive 3 days of back to back meetings, all of which were successful beyond what we had envisioned.
i have 2 new challenges; both exciting:
1) to begin creating maquettes for a series of paintings destined for a very beautiful large home in boulder. i love creating site specific paintings, so this does not in any way feel like work, but it's a challenge to conceptualize exactly what images will work best for which spaces. I shot a series of photos of the spaciousinterior with my iphone, which i just now adjusted & organized into a folder. my next step will be to begin drawing from a number of photo collages i made a few decades ago, when there was no digital photography, and beginning to create maquettes in gouache on paper, which i'll bring the client on our next denver/boulder trip.
2) to make a new series of plein air paintings in oil on canvas in 2 sizes: 36x36" & 36x40." these are larger canvases than i've ever attempted to paint plein air. accessing the sites where i like to go involves walking through some heavy brush & rocks, so getting the canvasses and my materials, easel & stool down there successfully will be a bit tricky. as will finding the right spot where i'm not bothered by direct sun & have the right terrain for setting up my easel on relatively flat ground (good luck on that) with no branches or rocks in the way.
this is a 16x16" plein air canvas, painted on 10/7/14 which is the direction i'd like to go with this new series. it's the right balance of descriptive & abstracted realism; the colors are the earth tones i love, which i used for 15 years while living in greece, and the mark making is beautiful, with nothing unnecessary, in the tradition of the 10th century chinese landscape painters i so admire.