Monday, March 2, 2015

Grateful Notices: Iced Over

Iced Over, oil on canvas 36 x 48 inches
Private collection

This painting was a real adventure. First, it came from a photograph of a series of white buildings nestled into a valley. The composition intrigued me - it was the angle of the flat white rooftops nestled in the monochromatic valley.

I kept going back to it and eventually made a tiny sketch that converted these basic elements into a stream surrounded my blues.

The painting is about simplicity and sophistication, many colors reading as two.

I finished the canvas over a year ago, only seeing it again on occasion. Late last year I put it on the wall and immediately understood how to make it better. Complexity was added, then partially removed. Colors and contrasts were added and sometimes modulated down with grey to make the colors glow or to make more atmosphere.

In the end, it is a simple and inviting composition about light and dark, blues and whites. After working on it all this time and making hundreds of moves on it's surface, I'm convinced that it exists somewhere.

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