5:36 PM: once i got back to the house, i saw that 163 needed more work. impatient, i couldn’t wait till tomorrow. so i took some colored pencils i have here in the house and worked into it. i may do more tomorrow in the studio, but here’s how it looks now:
watercolor/collage 163 as it looked at 5pm this afternoon, following modificatipons in colored pencil & flipped horizontal
12:07 PM: it was 3F this morning, and it’s not much warmer now. snow predicted tonight….maybe 2-3 inches.
DETAIL: watercolor/collage 162 11 x 15”
i made two new paintings today. at first, i tried integrating figures into these abstracted landscapes, as i’ve been doing recently. it was coming too much from my head, so i stopped and focused my attention on the essentials of color, line/mark-making and composition. as a result, something more liberated emerged. abstraction, in the end, can be a way to enjoy and explore those basic elements, finding new aspects of yourself in the process.
the fact that i’m a damned good realist painter doesn’t automatically tie me to that mode of expression. so for now….at least for today, i’m reveling in the experience of pure form & color. sure, you can detect a plant here, a branch there, a ripple in the water…all of the above have been drawn, brushed, collaged onto the surface. but my delight in creating unexpected, unpredictable imagery wins out today. and i feel oddly liberated as a result. philip-ness has evolved one little step.
BELOW: left-watercolor/collage 162, right-watercolor/collage 163
