My wonderful sister, Nancy, tells me that she enjoys seeing sequences of my paintings in progress. Several other people have mentioned this to me, too. It kind of surprises me, maybe because when I’m in the process it’s quite a lot of hard work and often I find it hard to believe I’ve made any progress after a day of painting. I guess what I see is the hard work and what others see is the progress? At any rate, I always intend to document my work as I go along. Partly to post here. Also in the hope that I’ll find some sort of formula for getting from Point A to Point B, eliminating the struggle in between. But then I’d probably get bored!
Above is a painting I’ve been working on for several months. I did start out documenting it daily, and posted a few photos several blog posts previous to this one. Then I got involved in painting and totally forgot to take pictures. This painting is 2 canvases bolted together. The total size is 58″ x 80″. Unbolted, it will fit into our Element, to be transported to shows. I’m finding it’s an aerobic workout to cover the surface of this one.
This little painting has been a real big pain in the neck. At 14 x 28″ if I charged what I’ve gone through on this one, it would cost a million dollars. It started out as a completely different painting. I decided I didn’t like the image—not the color, not the design, not anything. So I morphed it into a longer view of the same place. I worked and worked and worked. Hated that iteration, too. So I sanded off a lot of the paint, took what was left and created what you see above. Not only a different view but from an entirely different state! The initial painting was from Canyon de Chelley on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona and what you see here is from Zion National Park in Utah! So far so good I think. We’ll see if it cooperates and gets itself done.
I’ve barely worked on this one. I like what’s here, which is also a problem. If I hate what I’ve done, then I feel free to mess with it because it’s no big loss. If I like it then it’s hard to continue for fear that I’ll goof up what I like about it. The classic lose-lose proposition. Soon I’ll take the plunge and get to back to work on this one. But not today…