'A House Plant': Two Days, Two Different Moods

From my Moleskine project: the house plant on my dining room table, yesterday's painting, and today's. Two very different renditions.

Yesterday's painting of the house plant on my dining room table. Colour is still not quite right.

Today's painting of the house plant on my dining room table. Acrylic bone black base.

2nd Draft. Oil paints, then scratched over. I wiped it off.

3rd Draft today. Where I left it. I took the photo in daylight shade; it's darker than this in the Moleskine.

The first and last are in my Moleskine sketchbook - the three middle ones were on the way to the last one, to the left, which is likely finished.

The painting is dark and depressing, it disappears in the shadows, but in the light isn't too bad. A matte fixative will decrease the shine in it, too.

                              

Moleskine painting: 'A House Plant'

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.

                              

What is it about art that is hard to define?

A thought on why art is so difficult to define:

If art-making is essentially 'right brain,' 'intuitive,' meaning not of the discursive, logical sides of our minds, then it can never be explained in the language of scientific verification, can it. I think the best art criticism attempts to bridge the chasm. But nothing in the 'discursive' world can explain art, let alone art-making, or predict its occurrence. You might as well talk about shivers if you want to talk about art, as Emily Dickinson did. If you get goosebumps, or are breathless, or feel threatened, or have a sense of awe, if you melt looking at a painting, then, yes, very likely you are before a work of art that is transforming you.