11/30/2021 creek oil/collage as it looked at the end of my painting day today
1:01 PM: I worked pretty much all day on 11/30/2021 creek oil/collage. I think it’s in a better place than its was yesterday. at first I painted in a bunch of red, but that was coming from my head, and it’s mostly gone now. i’m trying my best to allow it to lead me where it wants to go, but of course the word trying makes that meaningless.
that said, (i’ve always waste to use that phrase) it seems to be developing an identity. and there are moments when I glance at it from about 20 feet, which is the distance from my iMac to the east wall, where it’s tacked, when I swoon. it ain’t easy to get me to swoon over a painting. i’d like visitors to the home or gallery or museum where it’s hanging to gaze at it for long periods, wander on, then return, they know not why.
they will discover rocks, tree trunks, acrobats & a skateboarder. and they will walk away, one hopes, with at least some of that sense of awe and wonder I experience every night lately, when I read a few pages of Wallace Stevens’ the man with the blue guitar:
The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.
They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."
The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."