1:41 PM: i continued work on celebration 28, introducing the figure of a paddler. i oroiginally photographed this guy from a bridge in alamosa, about an hour south of crestone. at the time, i made several paintings of him…actually there were two paddlers but in this composition i’m focusing on one. it’s always exciting to see the results of painting over two or three mostly whited over layers from previous versions, and in this case i allowed more of those layers to show through, such as the chinese characters you see in red and black.
as a result, a new reality springs forth and the paddler, in this case, is transported through space z& time to a no-place i like to think of as eternal.
working on the painting with the brush attached to long poles allowed me more freedom in my mark making, and contributes, i believe to the immediacy we feel from the imagry.
12:16 PM: today i placed celebration 28 on my studio floor and continued working on it with my brush atttached to a long pole. this tends to free up the drawing and introduce a new perspective to the painting.
the third creek drawing
9:02 AM: i’d been wanting to go back to the creek to paint for a long time, and yesterday was the day. it was clear wth perfect temperatures and little to no wind. so i drove 15 minutes up to the creek in a location adjacent to the trail leading up to the stupa and set up my table & stool. i got out my materials, including a glass container with india ink. it had been too long and i forgot how uneven the terrain is and how shaky my little collapsable table….so over went the table, with the ink and all my brushes, and wood quills. a huge mess!
but i persisted, cleaning it all up and setting the little table back up. i still haven’t been able to get all that ink off my fingers 24 hours later! i was able, however, to make 3 drawings using what was left of the ink with a quill pen and then adding color with my colored pencils. here are the results.
BELOW: 9/19/24 creek drawings 1 & 2
