No time!
In an all too fast ten minute space I managed to add a scraped on coat of Raw Sienna to the flying helmet, which is beginning to approach its finished sheepskin appearance. I laid on the paint then lifted it off with the knife so that it remained in the below the surface areas of the white highlights. Later I’ll add some pale yellow into both the white and the Burnt Sienna to get that sheepskin feel.
I’ve had images of 9/11 in my imagination all day because of the falling figure. This got me wondering about where imagery comes from: I often don’t really know what the paintings are about until quite a long time after making them, so I wonder if this one is catching something of the zeitgeist of the first decade of the 21st Century.
The subjects of the paintings are driven by some rational decisions: I like the idea of a contemporary Neolithic culture that exists alongside ours, but while I paint the work things change to suit the composition, or figures just don’t “work” in the piece so I alter them and they make a totally different piece despite my prepared sketches.
In this piece there is some structure within the imagery that is meaningful to me regardless of the way the painting ultimately will turn: trinity, four elements, the cube and a rose.
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