8/24/17 7:34PM after tweaking it this morning
3:12 PM: i didn’t touch th upper 3/4 of the painting because i feel ithas attained a very fine balance & shouldn’t be messed with. the lower portion of the painting however was a bit too blah, so i added a few very subtle highlights to the clouds on the lower right, and introduced a few more sheets of distant rain descending form the clouds over the san juans.
then i started work on a painting based upon a photo i shot just 4 minutes later: 8/24/17 7:38PM. it, too, is being painted in oil on a tinted ground, which has the exact same color as the acrylic ground underlying 8/24/17 7:34PM. i’m going about this one differently, starting work on the bottom of the canvas rather than the top. at the moment, this gives the interesting illusion of a sky above the sky. (BELOW)
progress in this sky series? evolution: an intertwining of my history as a “realist” painter, and my deep engagement with the “abstract,” via 10th c. chinese landscape painting and calligraphy, and my lifelong study of the painterly, as exemplefied by reubens, velasquez, hals, dekooning,……