Working from a photo taken last summer that reminded me of one of the photos in the William Eggleston show in the Modern Wing of AIC. A similar palette of purples and greens; dusk, uncertainty – the little girl is holding a stick – petulant and bored, violent. Maybe.

Some new progress paintings from the studio. When painting sky – the trick is (generally) to get the quality of openness and light with an opaque medium. I don’t always accomplish this but I am working on it. I seem to have reached some equitable understanding with the sky for the moment.

The colors that you see may not always sound logical to your brain. Sometimes, you need to let your knowledge – (I guess you could call it a physical knowledge – what you know how to do with paint on a brush and that connection to what you see) – override the brainy bit. Blue, yellow and orange on the top of the bus-shelter doesn’t sound at all right but it works to “feel” like a man-made object reflecting the sky and containing an artificial light source (pat self on back here).

The tone of everything matters; the interplay of light, dark, artificial and natural light sources all have to coexist. This will create the mood for the narrative in the picture.

I want the figures to be a part of this scene too and they will require the most effort to simplify. It seems to be a natural (and annoying) tendency to want to get people’s faces “right”. I want to describe something else (not the specific individuals) so will probably scrape and repaint the figures a few times to get closer to that essential or psychological thing.

Back at the studio yesterday after having seen the Matisse exhibit I couldn’t help but think “W.W.M.D.”

Especially when it comes to painting figures – always difficult to simplify faces, brains want to identify and categorize everything.

Those lemon yellows with mauve…