Still Point: Gestating

This painting is undergoing a re-make. The problem with painting a series is that when it is finished, you always have one in the series that's weaker than the others...unless of course, you are really, really accomplished at what you create...something I'm still working on becoming. 

So this was my weakest. I never really liked the way the paint went on. I could never really figure out for sure what was on top where--dark or light. I loved the marks and felt the paint did not do it justice. So I whited it out. Gessoed over all of the textured part of the canvas. Then went over the center, mostly low-lying section (except where the three circles are, that's raised, which part of the what's on top problem) with pearlescent. That was really cool. And made my decision about the light being at the back, dark on top, mostly. Then I had to figure out what to do next. I love gold gesso, so I chose that to go around the center section. 

Now what? Must add color--I kept the surroundground blue. Then I started working with violet mixed with red toned copper. That was cool and very dark and shiny (the moist part, you know). Then, on the lower right quadrant, I put in blue-green. Created an obstacle to overcome. Now my painting was divided by color. So that's what I faced when I entered my studio tonight. I was loving the elements, but not how they were together, had to make the painting more integrated. So I started adding blue-green on top of and around the red-copper-violet. And I was entranced by the close-up effect. I wanted to do that everywhere in the painting but had to stop myself.

The color combinations and effect made me think of peacock feathers and really colorful bruises (I had one that had amazing color that moved from knee to ankle and back for a period of about a month after I fell hard on my knee once) and gorgeous parking lot oil slicks. I love studying oil slicks after a bit of a rain. I know it's not cool when you consider what they really are (same with bruises, right?) but have you really studied the colors and the shapes? They quite often create mandala shapes. And they are blue with green and red-violet and a goldish-brown and dark, dark. Next time I see one, I'm going to drag a stick or something through it to see how it can be manipulated. Come to think of it, once I saw a jellyfish on the beach at Penn Cove that had all of those colors in it. It held my fascination until the tide threatened to take it back into the water. 

All this to say, that when I left my studio tonight, I felt like I was overcoming the obstacle, meeting the challenge. I like that feeling. I won't get back into my studio for a couple of nights, which is a bit of a frustration...don't want to lose momentum.