She Rests on Pillows in the Grass

It's not that I am deliberately moving into 'drip paintings,' no, that's not it. I've always inclined towards a wet-on-wet style, only now the paper or canvas is upright rather than on the floor, and so the paint does not pool in lakes but runs in one direction: down.

This figure is a strange amalgam of women who do not own themselves. Painting it, I thought of a distressed street woman that I see on Bloor St  who is quite anorexic and clearly an addict, and who I sometimes see sitting on the grass in parks in the area with her alcoholic boyfriend, and then, I guess somewhat contrastingly, I thought of the buxom models of artists who sometimes bear the children of the painters (think Picasso and his women, or Klimt, who apparently always had a few naked models lounging around in his studio and apparently fathered a dozen or so children), of the sensuality of a Fragonard and the cutting of razor sharp blue paint as it slides in rivulets down the prepared paper.

She Rests on Pillows in the Grass, 2012, Brenda Clews24" x 18", 60cm x 45cm, oil paint on 90lb archival paper.