watercolor 121 at 4:15pm today
3 PM: watercolor 121 has gone through a number of stages today, mostly involving the use of collaged elements. once i turned it upside down, it began making more sense compositionally. when it started getting too busy, i introduced more white space. when it started out yesterday, there was abundant white space, but it was lacking in staccato rhythm. too predictable. it may be that the introduction of that orange-yellow shape in the center allowed it to begin singing. getting rid of those concentric blue circles, which were ripples in the water, seemed like a sacrifice, but they ended up being a distraction. likewise the log was too loggy and needed to be broken up so that it could join the band. harkening back to the collages i made last year, a sliver of a map of the netherlands also joined the party.
BELOW: 3 of the stages watercolor 121 went through today
12:31 PM: i continued work on watercolor 121. i decided after looking at it last night and this morning that it would greatly benefit from a few collaged elements. as i was working, i flipped it upside down, and liked it far better that way. this has happened numerous times before/ it shifts my set perception of what the painting is in my mind and moves it towards what it could be. clearly, this holds true for ourselves as well; our persona. an abstracted creek painitng has morphed into a mysterious event.
BELOW: watercolor 121 yesterday (left) and just moments ago
watercolor 120 9/18/20
7:49 AM: this 1972 gouache on paper hangs in our house. it’s the view out my tsudio window in athens, in the direction of the tower of the winds, but looking down at the street. there i could see kyrios yannis, who’s self created job it was to park cars in the neighborhood. next to him is his cat. he was a gentle soul.
what i noticed when i shot a photo of this little painting yesterday, is that my current sense of space in painting, for example in watercolor 120, painted a few days ago, is present even back then.