3:23 PM: I made some changes following my 12:36 post. they are mostly to the red headed figure on the left which, as you will remember, was originally upside down.i also made improvements to his skiff, which now has some shadows that weren’t there before. the curve of the craft now decends to his right arm, giving more definition to the handle he’s holding. and finally, I added the yellow paddle, which is important coloristically as well as compositionally. I wasn’t happy with the pink sleeveless shirt he was wearing in the photo, so I took it out and made him shirtless, other than the green wrap around his mid-section. the figure on the right underwent some changes to the lighting on his shoulders, which is now more pronounced, and to his right hand, which is now more defined.
from a distance of about 20 feet, as I now gaze at the painting, it reads well, and, I think, inspires the question ny times reviewer john russell posed in the quote at the bottom of this page, which is also at the very top of my home page.
8/2/2021 creek oil during my process of modifications this morning
12:36 PM: I was able this morning to continue modifications to 8/2/2021 creek oil. last time I worked on her, I flipped the red headed figure on the left so that he & his buddy are paddling their floats in tandem.by the way, i’m more conscious than ever of the words i’m using, the sentences i’m constructing because mikela and I have been watching pretend it’s a city, with fran leibowitz & Martin scorsese. a lot of this production rests on fran’s use of language, her cadence, the way she modulates her inimitable voice. i’m very aware of the musicality of language, so i’m drinking it in, and she’s in my head as I write this blog post. it’s not for everybody, but I highly recommend watching it.
so anyway, it was with great relish that I dove back in to this painting. it’s not there yet, but it is emitting sounds that occasionally sound like song. originally, we spotted these guys from the bridge in alamosa. other kids were on the shore, preparing to launch their small crafts into the river. there was a festival taking place in the park and there was a festive atmosphere. so this scene fulfilled a number of my passions: figures viewed from above; activity that spurs more questions than it answers; as John Russell wrote in his ny times review of a nyc exhibition:
“ there is about him something of the storyteller, even if we never quite figure out what the story is. he makes us wonder what his people get up to when they aren't in the picture
-and that is after all one of the perennial aims of painting.”