The House Plant, 21cm x 29cm, 8" x 11.5", 2012, Moleskine folio Sketchbook, oils, India and watercolour inks.
A meditation in ink on the plant, which withdraws its essence into its own mystery even as it offers its vibrancy. The brush wet with ink, you only have one chance. Lift the brush, glide it on the paper.
This plant is on my dining room table. I painted it in my Moleskine this morning. Yes, maybe I am trying to speed up.
I'm thinking to leave this, and go on trying to fill up my Moleskine... I started it last February! And only a dozen paintings so far out of a hundred pages? Later I can come back to finish pieces. Like leaving a rough draft of a poem for awhile before polishing it, it is often better to give some time to the process of creating a painting.
I used a little Sony Cybershot bought in 2007 to take this photo, and I think I need to figure out the white balance since the paper is a whitish cream colour, not the tone here.
Okay, why am I painting pretty little pictures like this anyhow? I'm trying to go backwards to go forwards. To re-find something in my art that was lost a long time ago. This painting tells me I've found it. Because of that, I may leave it essentially alone when I finish it. Tighten it up, rather than cover it with a scrawl of lines. I'm not attempting realism in any way. It's another quest altogether. Working on the drawings and paintings in this sketchbook is taking me to deep, interior places, and already as I turn the pages, looking at them, they describe my journey there.
No comments:
Post a Comment