Thoughts to share, ideas to ponder

I picked these roses from the garden in front of San Clemente Art Supply, compliments of Patti!  As it had rained hard the prior night, the full blossoms were drenched and drooping under the weight.  I rescued them and gave them their due.  Below is a progression of the painting from start to almost finished. 

I had only a few hours to capture this piece as the blossoms were fading fast.  The pressure was on, and these beautiful blossoms certainly held their own, exhibiting "Grace Under Pressure".

Emotion.......

To be human is to feel joy, pain, sorrow, elation, sadness, exuberance, melancholy, happiness, and peace.  The older we get, the more our experiences and emotions surrounding them compound, yielding an overall attitude about life.  Is your feeling about life one of despair or of hope?

In thinking about my own life and attempting to translate this emotion of being human--and specifically the feeling of hope--into something universal and tangible in the way of a painting required some real mental stretching.

Artists can convey emotion by depicting a certain look in the eye or the posture of the head or body.  However, in the case of my own particular experiences, the notion of hope came to me by way of the following (fuzzy) mental picture which I will attempt to use words to convey:  dramatic foreground darkness to a distant figure bathed in the peace (and grace) of cool, clean light.  Colors are blues (restful) and white surrounded by warmth.

Imagination....

I could picture the scene in my head, but I wanted the idea to be believable and not fantasy-based. So, using some ideas put forth in James Gurney's book, Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist, I built a model  to represent the picture in my head, enjoying the process and feeling like a student building a diorama for a school project.

Using foam core, I cut and glued walls together, creating a hinged roof.  Brown frame touch-up pens helped me create the illusion of a hardwood floor and blue acrylic paint was used for the dark walls I wanted for the foreground room.

I wanted the foreground room to let in a bit of light by higher clerestory windows.  The rear room was to be a light filled sun-room. 

I sculpted a crude resting figure from clay, draped it with sheer fabric, and placed it in the "window seat".

A "table" and a vase of flowers in the foreground room completed the scene, allowing me to "test" the validity of my mental picture and analyze the light patterns.

I liked what I saw, so the next step was to set the stage, which I did in my own home with furniture, props and a hired model.

Creation.....

After completing a study from life in oil, I set about to complete the large final painting in pastel.  The work had now just begun.  Since the stage had been set, I was able to doggedly challenge myself to "speak" from the heart and modify and morph the final piece to match my initial inspiration, making the following changes:

• I turned the model with her back to the viewer....deep emotion is a very private matter. 

• I was able to resolve the nagging that came by way of an epiphany that the painting should be a diptych (two paintings that go together but are physically separated).  How does this idea speak metaphorically to moving from despair to  hope?

Fruition...

The result is a painting that captures, for me, the grace of hope.

Painting this guy is always fun as he has such distinctive features.  I began differently than I normally would.  Rather than a line drawing with the placement of each set of features measured, I started with the eyes and bridge of the nose and "walked across the form" the way Rose Frantzen explained in her Alla Prima Portrait video.  It's a fun and freeing way to paint.  Size is 12 x 9.  Painted in about 2 hours.