I think I am done. . . .

It has been a while since I last shared my work on this painting. There have been many versions and I figured it was just best to bring it back to the blog only when I thought it was done. 

There were a number of times when I thought I had wrecked it and contemplated giving up on it. But whenever I got some distance from it I was able to either see it with 'new' eyes ('Hey, that's not so bad!") or while driving I would have a thought about how I could make it work. 

Often it overwhelmed me. There was too much color, too many brush strokes. The flesh is too bright, the flesh is too grey. It's way too spotty. What is she trying to say? Was there any message any more? Was the painting all over the place and no longer focused? How can I pull all of that together??

Those were my voices. But slowly, slowly I brought it under control--every day new changes, slowly working at making it better but never knowing until the final days that I could see the end was near.

And here it is.

Looking for the truth. . .

Looking for the truth is not always easy. Here I have marked up the painting with an erasable marker, trying to figure out where I went wrong today. 

It was hard working on something that was almost perfect. Will I wreck it? Perhaps so, but I have faith that I'll be able to triumph if I stick with it. I make it a policy to ignore 'wrecking' voices if at all possible. If I did listen, I would never know how far I could have gone.

Third Draft

What a delicate dance I do when I paint. The brush work is rough, the colors random--or are they??

Another draft of the Pyk painting!

I have worked a bit on it at my studio this afternoon. Fine tuning is tricky business. Only for the brave at heart. I'm finding blogging makes me less brave. Gotta work through that!

The Pyk painting in progress

When I started the painting, I worked first with the photo in Adobe PhotoShop where I changed the composition a bit, turned it into a black and white photo and then made a grid over it for an easy transfer to the canvas.

Once I got to my studio I prepared the canvas. I first painted it red which I do with most of my paintings to give the final painting a sense of warmth. (Red also adds an energy to a painting that I guess I am addicted to!) Then I marked a grid over the canvas with chalk and blocked the whole figure in with purples, blues and greens. Unfortunately, I did not take a photo of the painting in the early stages so you cannot see how ghastly it looked! But believe me--the colors were not flattering to Madelein!

But the colors were chosen for a reason--I wanted to be challenged! I wanted to see if I could actually bring life and energy into a dark, shadowy painting of a person. I wanted to see if  color could be the vehicle of transformation.

This painting is 11 x 14",  in acrylics and at this point is unfinished.

Madelein Pyk

This is my first blog post. I want to use this medium to explain what goes on in my head when I paint. I'm doing this for you the viewer--so that you have glimpses of what is going on in one artist's mind as she works and also that you will see the process that goes into a particular painting.

But I am also doing this for myself. Often when I paint, if you asked me why I did something, like why I used a particular color,  I probably wouldn't be able to tell you. It is an internal process--not something I have a lot of awareness of. So I am hoping the act of blogging, or writing down my thoughts will ultimately help me vocalize more, as well as understand better, that very personal journey that I myself take with each piece of art I produce.

The painting that I have started working on is of Madelein Pyk--a well-known Swedish artist. The photo that I am using as my reference was taken by my friend, Henry Greene--a photographer whose work I admire greatly. He and his wife met Madelein in Stockholm at a museum and they all ended up spending the day together.

I was drawn to this photo because of the vulnerability I see and also the determined spirit of the  woman.  To me, she looks like she was not about to back down on anything life gave her--even with the limitations of age.  That is what I feel when I see the above photo.  My challenge will be to capture those qualities in a painting.