Photos from yesterday’s talk, which was enjoyable. I spoke about alchemical nigredo, the grail flints found in Neolithic tombs and the nature of inner transformation discovered in the search for the purified and re-integrated prima materia, embarked upon by all alchemists.
A good day, an a la prima day of painting wild roses and establishing a landscape for the Fool to pass through. This was quite enjoyable and has set the foundation for the way that the composition will follow from here on, with detail and prettiness surrounding the traveling man. Having established these flowers with [...]
The acacia leaves are finished in the right hand corner, but I’m considering adding more to the paintings in the lower right quarter. To complete the leaves I added a stroke of Burnt Sienna mixed with Raw Sienna to each leaf, turning them a little reddish-green. I want to show how the horizon can be [...]
I’ve added a layer of dark green over the blue work, working nicely to add substance to the tree over the traveler. In the detail you can see the blues remaining visible about the leaves, while in the big picture this is not particularly visible. I like this kind of variation because it brings vibration [...]
I’ll be at Bert Green Fine Art for an artists talk on Saturday at four o’clock. My installations Grails and As the Crow Flies have been there this month. Do join me at the gallery if you’re in the Los Angeles area. Downtown has changed a lot in the last ten years – there are [...]
A pleasant couple of hours in the studio this evening proved productive, with enough time to add a second layer of dark leaves overlapping the earlier work. I’m getting more familiar with the pattern of the leaves and enjoying the swoop of the branches more this time around, so there’s a bit more of a [...]
I’ve been having a good time in the studio tonight working on the branch up above the traveler and the landscape to the left of him. I’ve used my palette knife to scrape excess greens and browns onto the surface, then a soft brush to soften the landscape as it recedes from us. The browns [...]
Last weekend I had the chance to visit the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. I found this visit disturbing because my perception of the art in the gallery was that everything seemed old and shabby. A collection of photographs by the renowned Diane Arbus seemed to have faded and browned over the past fifty [...]
The early morning is becoming a new favorite time to paint – I put in a couple of hours this morning in peace and solitude working on adding a darker green to the leaves and beginning to use Iron Oxide brown mixed with a little Van Dyke Brown to define the woody stems of the [...]
The leaves are all green now, although still far too pale. The texture of the leaves if working nicely, with the light grey of the earlier layer revealed in the dragged green of this new layer. Next a darker layer will pop the leaves out from the background and catch in the lower areas of [...]
