I now know that there will be ample representation by others for the Merrimacians show. Five people have not replied, and some of them will have a number of paintings, and yet, so far I have approximately 21 paintings coming in. This is an important aspect of the show to allow the public to see varying styles and methods and mediums of art.
Yesterday I worked on three paintings, trying to get them more resolved. Since I faced the fact that I won't be able to do a lot of work on all of them in time for the show, and realized that showing some of them in their initial stage would be a good idea, I'm under less pressure to rush to the finish line. Sadly, I can't work on one of them further because I only took a couple of photos and they are so blurry and at a distance that it won't give me any information to work with.
Showing those untouched versions with the reworked versions brought me to a thought process which compared the 'portrait oil sketch' to a 'plein air pochade'. Both are meant to be spontaneous and document the feeling and gesture and color notes rather than a finished work. In outdoor painting, when someone takes their plein air piece indoors and works on it further, it almost always looses it's refreshing quality.
For those of you who are aware of Daniel Greene, yesterday I finally bit the bullet and worked with his palette AND ENJOYED IT IMMENSELY. I had heard of him back in the early 80s when I was at the Art Students League and have the DVD and have watched it many times. I studiously took notes on the palette (he pronounces it pal-lette, accent on the last syllable) rewinding and rewinding the tape in order to record his every nuance regarding mixing the paint. Being innately frugal, I was always leery of 'wasting paint'! I did a paint inventory this year and realized that I had well over 100 tubes of paint, so what the heck! let's live a little!
No comments:
Post a Comment