There You Are: 30"x30"
Painting: Acrylic on Canvas
This gem is one of my new June paintings. It resembles the pieces in my Celestial Correspondence series but is much, much smaller. I wanted to challenge myself to paint smaller. The experience was a little frustrating as I missed the full arm brush strokes used in my larger pieces.
I have also changed the way I have been handling my backgrounds by making it lighter and giving a darker base for the figure to lay on. This gives the piece a sense of grounding and is a little more comfortable for the viewer to identify with the figure.
My husband was really uncomfortable with this change and felt that I was moving away from my style. I believe it is just another step in the ongoing experiment that every painting seems to be a part. This makes me think of Stephen King’s Dark Tower Series and how many of his stories throughout his body of work somehow intertwine with the larger storyline. You can see that all of his characters are somehow related which logically they have to because they are all connected through him. This is my story in pictures and somehow all of my paintings reflect some aspect about myself that is a result of continuous research to reveal the human condition and what is sacred about each of us.
This lady reflects the degree of comfort I have recently found in myself. Becoming more comfortable in your own skin is worth more than gold. Of course looking carefully into the eyes you can see I'm not quite there yet but working hard to find the inner peace that comes with age and experience. I am not sure if the eyes are ever watchful and vigilant or full of continued curiosity and wonder about the world. What does the eyes say to you?
More Figurative Paintings
2 comments:
Are they self-portraits? The faces have the intimacy of self-portraits. The petals of some of our flowers resemble the fins of Siamese fighting fish.
WOW! My first non-family comment on my blog! :) Thanks!
In a way the figures are self portraits. I do not work from images of myself but they are certainly designed to reflect my emotions and changes... kinda inevitable for that reflection so I use it.
Siamese fighting fish? I can see that. I live no where near a large body of water, not even an aquarium. So I suppose my inspiration come straight from the flowers that I choose to paint.
I have a history with purple cone flowers as they provided an income for my family while my husband and I were in college.... at the time we called it "Snake Root" he could make enough to supplement our shortfalls during a day of digging it with a pick ax. He would let it dry and then sell his find to the herb buyers in town. It grows wild where we used to live and it was like picking up pennies from the cow pastures. That is probably why they are snaky and blade like.
I believe they have captured my imagination again to echo the various cycles we all go through from poverty in one form or another to prosperity and back again.
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