PAINTERLY: (of a painting or its style) characterized by qualities of color, stroke, and texture rather than of line."Botticelli is a linear painter, whilst Rembrandt's work would be considered painterly"
the last supper, 38x20” after scraping into the graphite grey
2 PM: i scraped into the graphite grey a little; i felt after gazing at her for an hour, that it read too much as an unbroken black, and thus needed some very light texture, created by scraping. i think it worked, which is making it easier to appreciate her without getting stuck.
if you compare with the image i posted an hour ago, you’ll notice the subtle but significant difference.
1 PM: i’ve been bugged all along that this painting was a prisoner of it’s title: the last supper. and i’ve had a growing desire to treat it as i would any other painting; as a play of forms and color in space. so, earlier this morning, i removed it from my east painting wall, laid it on my painting table, and felt a strong desire to use black. well, not really…it’s called graphite grey by williamsburg, the manufacturers of this oil paint. i’m biased towards them because they’re located in williamsburg, brooklyn, where i was born.
so now, as i look at it on my wall, it reads as a painterly painting, and not a group of people having dinner. as with my other recent paitings with figures viewed from above, my eye is taken on a journey, i’m left to create my own story about what’s going on, but more importantly, i revel in the interplay of reds, greens, blues and BLACK!
it took long enough, but it was worth the wait!