1:53 PM : hard to keep up, eh? inspired by 17th c. chinese painting, nude by the creek has now become yang. a fold-out image from mai mai sze’s classic series of volumes gave me the path i’d been waiting for. figures from my menagerie of acropolis museum visitors integrate beautifully with the delicate patterning. a frog and a flying insect seem right at home with the meandering figures viewed from above.
i ran out of steam a little while ago, so i’ll pick up where i left off tomorrow morning.
argolid, 38x36” as it looked after the whiteover and the start of my initial new composition
2:45 PM: i had about enough of all that bright blue in argolid, so i whited over it and started working into it. i cut my left index finger this morning with my new super sharp bread knife. i’ve got it all bandaged up but as soon as i take the bandage off to change it, blood gushes out. hoping it doesn’t need stiches…we’ll see tomorrow.
acropolis museum V, 35x37” as it looked following my tweaks to the undergarment of the jumping skateboarder
11:54 AM: i got an early start this morning, and was able to work on the same two paintings i was working on yesterday.
on acropolis V i made some minor improvements to the same jumping female skateboarder as yesterday. on nude by the creek, i whited over the entire painting, but with a thin enough layer of paint as to allow some of yesterdays version to peek through, giving the newly painted figures something to stand on. the white oil paint picked up some of the still fresh layer from yesterday, giving it a pinkish hue. the by now familiar figures of the acropolis museum visitors: the woman with the red bag and the couple are drawn in, with only suggestions of flesh tones.
nude by the creek as it looked at noon today
acropolis 5 as it looked following the work on did this morning on the jumping skateboarder
2:55 PM: i felt the jumping female skateboarder in acropolis 5 needed more work, which is how i spent my morning.
then i moved on to a new painting titled nude by the creek, 35x37”.
nude by the creek 35x37” on day 1
rhyton, 28x24” oil on linen
1:35 PM: RHYTON: i had intended to start a brand new painting this afternoon, but after gazing at self portrait with 2 paintings, 24x28” for a few days, since i created it 2 days ago, i decided that it, too had to go. so i worked over it with the same blue oil pigment i used this morning for the new argolid. confused? thats ok; if & when you encounter them in person, i think you’ll understand.
rhyton is the name for mycenean terracotta libation vessels. this one, in the shape of a bull, is from pseira, in eastern crete, 1500-1200 BC.
RHYTON terracotta drinking vessel in the shape of a bull
ARGOLID 36x38” oil on linen, painted over PT with 2 Paintings just an hour ago
11:59 AM: i was just going to ditch the painted over canvas i was working on today, but then i got into a blu mood, and went over most of it with blue, adding some red and darker blue lines on the edges. i had to shoot it on the table from above, so that the fresh paint wouldn’t run.
something indescribable happens for me when i’m paining over a painting that was mostly in my head, simply moving the brush where it wnats to go. but that previous tortured version had to be in order to burst forth with these unplanned gestures, revealing themselves as they occur. and naming themselves ARGOLID. ARGOLIS, by the way, was the foremost seat of power of the myceneans that dominated greece from around 1500 to 1200 BC
and now on to something new, on a completely fresh, blank quadruple primed linen canvas.
MYCENEAN terra cotta figurine , ca. 1550-1450 BC
2:31 PM: i started pt with 2 paintings this morning, but i wasn’t happy with how it was evolving, so i scraped over it, painted into it a bit, and left it like this till tomorrow.
self portrait with 2 paintings-1, 24x26”, oil on linen with collaged elements from an earlier painting beneath
3:35 PM: i started a new painting this afternoon, which is painted over and older whited out one. it’s 24x26” and, so far is a self portrait with 2 recent paintings. that’s it for today…i’m still dealing with my in floor heating thermostat and may have found a solution from a sweet tech person names menzot, a name i’ve never encountered till today. she walked me through a series of steps for setting the thermostat at 70F. so if i come in tomorrow morning and it’s 70 degrees, i’ll know it worked!
jazz 16 after i flipped it 90 degrees.
3:29 PM: yesterday while gazing at jazz 16 hanging in our bedroom, it occured to me/us that it would be a far more interesting painting if it were turned on it’s side. here’s the result.
to the right you see how it looked before the flip. it’s still a pretty interesting composition, but now i/we find it more compelling.
today was one of those rare days when i didn’t paint at all. i spent the whole morning trying to figure out how to adjust the thermostat in my studio. it’s impossibly complicated, and all the tech guys i spoke to agreed. rather than try and adjust it so that it’s set lower at night and goes up to 70F during the day, i just set it for a constant 70F …her it worked..i’ll know in the morning wheter or not it worked. it was way chilly in there today, and was snowing all day.
this is how jazz 16 looked before flipping it yesterday
kabuki creek, 20x80”/ 50.8x203.2 cm. as it looked following today’s tweaks
2:16 PM: i made a few minor tweaks to kabuki creek this morning.
kabuki creek, 20x80” / 50.8 x 203.2 cm oil on linen
2:41 PM: and a bit more work on kabuki creek, including that siena i’m not sure about yet.
kabuki creek, 20x80” / 50.8 x 203.2 cm oil on linen
12:06 PM: this morning, and until a few minutes ago, i continued work on what used to be the original acropolis painting, which has become kabuki creek.
drawing from the considerable number of photos i’ve shot over the years of our local creeks, and from reproductions of tokugawa reimeikai’s handscrolls of women’s kabuki, ca. 1620’s-30’s, i’m creating a composition more suited to the 20x80”/ 50.8 x 203.2cm. dimensions of this canvas. i’ll see, following this brief break to post to my blog, whether there’s more to do. my juices start flowing and roiling when it involves rocks, branches and water.
acropolis 20x80” as it looked moments ago
1:52 PM: this painting has gone through many stages, and this was the most recent, done on october 27. today, as i gazed at it on my south studio wall, it wasn’t working at all. such a tall, narrow format: 80x20” is challenging, whether verical or horizontal. so today i’m giving it another go, this time as a horizontal.
while the most recent version you see here has some admirable passages, it simply doesn’t hold up. the viewer’s eye wanders up and down with no place to rest. i had condidered removing the walking plaid shirted figure towars the bottom, whose scale doesn’t match the other figures. but we’d still be faced with the same issue.
