Day 30
I think its day 30 now- painting when the weather is tolerable, trying to get through 16 canvases, to hang 10- maybe- and a few weeks to go.
I can't imagine at this point that anyone would ever read anything I am writing now, but to me it seems like a "finishing-out"- much of what I have experienced this past year, and now in interacting again with painting, has told me much about where I am in the trajectory of life, and what I have in me, and what I have left to explore, or care about.
I paint now, at almost 60, with some of the same paints I had when I was 20 - those colors you only need a bit of- that never dry, like Cadmium Orange for example.
And the palette of colors I use now has only changed slightly- as I realized I did not need some colors.
Still, I am a neophyte. The grand subtlety of color mixing, and understanding how each color mixes into another, is as hard for me as memorizing a poem. I just never will. And with paint,heck, I've made all those charts, all those mixes, trying to understand the subtle way a color changes as you add other colors- and I still don't know. I still don't know what blue to grab when I paint this late fall sky, and what to mix with it to make it the glowing, brilliant, non-blue that is is.
Much is about value. A painting in all the wrong hues, and all the right values, still gets it right. Thus we can easily interpret a black and white photo- stripped of color- though no such thing as a black and white world exists.
My eyes aren't so good now, and when the light gets dim, as it does when I paint in the evening,I know I am not seeing what I once saw. I didn't expect this change. No one told me. I have no idea now what I am not seeing.
I suspect- and know- that if I had a prime time to paint- I am beyond it. It's past. I feel much the same things when I look- but it is slower, more like dealing with something one could never figure out, and now lack the super powers of youth to do so. I didn't expect that exactly- another surprise.
So I paint what I always have painted. Same things . Cezanned talked about motifs- finding one- finding one's own. I stick to what I know- and when I think, what else might I want to paint? Nothing comes to mind. Though if I painted 24/7, or even 1/7, I know I'd find a new motif or two.
I can't imagine at this point that anyone would ever read anything I am writing now, but to me it seems like a "finishing-out"- much of what I have experienced this past year, and now in interacting again with painting, has told me much about where I am in the trajectory of life, and what I have in me, and what I have left to explore, or care about.
I paint now, at almost 60, with some of the same paints I had when I was 20 - those colors you only need a bit of- that never dry, like Cadmium Orange for example.
And the palette of colors I use now has only changed slightly- as I realized I did not need some colors.
Still, I am a neophyte. The grand subtlety of color mixing, and understanding how each color mixes into another, is as hard for me as memorizing a poem. I just never will. And with paint,heck, I've made all those charts, all those mixes, trying to understand the subtle way a color changes as you add other colors- and I still don't know. I still don't know what blue to grab when I paint this late fall sky, and what to mix with it to make it the glowing, brilliant, non-blue that is is.
Much is about value. A painting in all the wrong hues, and all the right values, still gets it right. Thus we can easily interpret a black and white photo- stripped of color- though no such thing as a black and white world exists.
My eyes aren't so good now, and when the light gets dim, as it does when I paint in the evening,I know I am not seeing what I once saw. I didn't expect this change. No one told me. I have no idea now what I am not seeing.
I suspect- and know- that if I had a prime time to paint- I am beyond it. It's past. I feel much the same things when I look- but it is slower, more like dealing with something one could never figure out, and now lack the super powers of youth to do so. I didn't expect that exactly- another surprise.
So I paint what I always have painted. Same things . Cezanned talked about motifs- finding one- finding one's own. I stick to what I know- and when I think, what else might I want to paint? Nothing comes to mind. Though if I painted 24/7, or even 1/7, I know I'd find a new motif or two.