11/1/22 swirling creek, 21x17” oil & collage on linen, day 1
3:02 PM: i took one of the 21x17” canvasses i cut for the athens show and started 11/1/22 swirling creek. i had previously started working from an old photo i took of downtown athens. it was just a sketch, but i was doing it for all the wrong reasons, based on what i thought would be attractive to athenians. stupid motivation! so instead i dove into this new one based on some of the many plein air watercolors i’ve made and continue to make at one of our local creeks. this is day one, which as i’m in the habit of doing, has been scraped, painted into, scraped again until the magic of our creeks begins to appear, which is always secondary to the painterly gestures of the brush. let’s see where it takes me tomorrow. i’m cooked for the day.
11/1/22 i mentioned that i found yesterday’s 10/31/22 pleine air #1 too busy, especially in the upper quadrant.
so this morning in the studio i made some modifications, mostly using collaged elements, including from a map and a watch ad. gazing at it from afar, it seemsat the same time more coherent and more mysterious. the elements i thought were too much on top are faintly visible through the semi-transparent paper i used. and the obvious creek-scape elements dance well with the newly added collaged bits.
BELOW: the before & after
DETAIL
