January 16, 2016

Larger Painting from the Studies

Just getting started, this 40 x 40 painting is going to take some time... I am thinking of using more color in the large painting, not sure whether that will stay that way.




January 9, 2016

Words in a Painting

I've decided to leave the study I was working as it is and take on another view of that same quote.  I've rarely put words into paintings, other than a vague impression of a sign on a store, so the focus on those words is going to be a new thing for me.  I've taken what I did on the previous painting, and have begun the focus on the words by cropping the image so it's horizontal (as writing is) and cropped closer to so that the words really lead you in and could be as important as the strong lines of the escalators.  I don't really have a roadmap for how to go about this, so I'm thinking a lot about the process.  I do want to end up with the words beliveably etched into the concrete, yet readable.

There's certainly a lot of examples out there of art that's just words or includes words.  I'm not sure that any of them speak to me as I want this painting to work.  Anyway, here's the opening layout of the new painting, where I plan to develop more about the idea of the experience sweet and sad.


January 8, 2016

The Experience Sweet and Sad

Finally back in the studio this week, I am working on a painting of the Dupont Circle North metro stop, where a quote from Walt Whitman is etched in the concrete.  I've painted the scene before from a different angle, but from here, you see the end of the quote:  "the experience sweet and sad" It seems very fitting to my feelings right now. I've been working on getting the light right and keeping the figures in less resolved.  Might be done.


The full quote, from The Dresser by Walt Whitman, is:

Thus in silence in dreams’ projections, 
Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals;
 
The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand,
 
I sit by the restless all the dark night — some are so young;
 
Some suffer so much — I recall the experience sweet and sad . . .