For today’s FirstFridayArtWalk over on Google+, here is the first oil painting I’ve completed this year that I’m happy with. 🙂
It’s also my first attempt to interpret my recent watercolor mini-painting series into an oil painting, and I’ve pushed myself in several other ways with this one, too. Perhaps a bit too much pushing for one painting, but I do like it and I’m ready to try another, having learned a few things though this work.
This is another work that started out quite differently than it ended up. It was filled from corner to corner with ovals to start with, but then I kept taking out more and more stuff. I’m much happier with it now. 🙂
I think this is the favorite of my recent paintings. I’d love to paint this loose all the time — or looser even. I don’t know why it doesn’t always seem possible. Constitutionally predisposed to tightness, I fear…
Here’s another new painting that started out quite differently than it ended up. This one took about a week to resolve; and I was working on it during the time Hurricane Isaac was building in the Gulf Coast, so I guess you could say that became an influence. 😉
Even though I scraped lots of paint off of this several times while in the process of creation, it still has lots of wonderfully gooey paint on it (dry to the touch now, of course).
I got a bit bolder with the colors in this painting. This was intended to be a continuation of the same visual idea from the painting I posted yesterday. The fact that it doesn’t quite seem to be is proof of something, but what exactly, I’m not sure. Another goofy composition, but I love it!
It may be hard to believe, but this little painting took about a week. It started out vertical, with less stuff, but even goofier than this, and it just took that long to resolve the composition to my liking.
Once I got it to this point, I was thrilled, and thought, “Oh, this is it! This will be my new signature style!”
Tune in tomorrow to see whether I was right or not. 😉
In this piece, I was aiming to create a painting with some nice space in it (and I do like the space here). Then it got goofy. I do like the way the wobbly stack of shapes in the lower left quadrant serves as a counterpoint to elegant cloud-like forms.
I haven’t posted in a while, but I have been painting. I have about 12 new paintings to share; here is the first of my new series of abstracts that I have been working on since July.
I began this one inspired by passion flowers (we have a huge vine of small passion flowers in our yard). I started this in acrylic, as my previous painting, “Food Forest,” was done in acrylic and I was so happy (eventually) with both the process and the end result.
With this one, however, I found working in acrylic as frustrating as is usually the case for me. So I repainted the whole thing in oil and then ended up painting out much of what had been part of the original composition. I finally abandoned the idea of a passionflower, and let the painting tell me what it wanted to be. And this is the result.
Kind of goofy, kind of beautiful, and I find myself loving the parts but wondering about the whole. This painting got juicier and juicier as I simplified, simplified, simplified.
I started this painting last week, based on the sketch below. The sketch itself is based on a sculpture in tan canvas and black wire by one of my favorite sculptors, Lee Bontecou.
I haven’t really developed a set way to get started with the work I’ve been doing for the past 6 months. I usually have a period of getting very lost while developing my composition, and then have to paint my way out.
This time, I came up with some sketches to serve as the basis for the paintings’ compositions. (I have another one planned as well). Then, I give myself the freedom to allow other things to occur as I work. I may also try another, larger version of this, based on a more accurate interpretation of the sketch.
