I added burned and blackened plants to the mortar gaps in the wall, using a liner brush with ivory black, then a mix of it with Titanium white, using the darker paint for a general leafy look gently softened with a clean rag, then painting the linear ashy stalks in the grey. I added a glaze of black to the left hand Boaz megalith, scraping it off with a dried out old rag to render a stone finish.
On the right I used the remainder of the black to try out a solid black foreground which I can scrape with white to create the same stone texture in the foreground, while to create depth letting the detail fade and become lighter as the ground recedes to the wall.Â
We’re in the run up to the exhibit now, so I’m getting increasingly interested in making sure all the work I will be showing is in good condition. I want to clean out the edges of all the canvases that will be hung, and to frame the tarot paintings. I think I’ll have Temperance, Justice, Death and the Sun completed in time, and I will need to get the large Geomantic Man piece into showable condition again. It’s not that there’s a great deal of work to do, but that I’m not entirely sure what direction the whole piece is going in. Usually these questions resolve themselves as the work moves toward completion, so I’m sure it will turn out fine.
I’m aware of a stylistic difference between the figurative paintings and the far more symbol oriented work I’m doing with the Geomantic Man, that fits far more comfortably with the installation work of the Cabinet than with the figurative alchemical paintings. I think that’s fine as long as there is a differentiation between the two groupings.
