As I wrote last week, I am in the process of finishing unfinished projects and painting the many unpainted canvases and wooden surfaces I’ve collected. Here is one of them. A wooden shelf that’s been sitting in a pile waiting to be painted from Baltimore to Bogotá to Caracas. So last week I slapped on a layer of gesso followed by a layer of blue acrylic paint and let it sit on the floor a while. I figured eventually it would tell me what to do with it.
I should probably mention that since I started working on so many paintings at once, and since Owen got tall enough to reach my paints, I rearranged the guest room and am once again I am enjoying a full studio, with paintings spread out all around me. It really is a nice set up, a room with a view even. The one exception being the bed….which I have moved to the side and am hoping to convert into a sort of loungey couch to lure visitors into modeling for me. Which leads me to my second point. I recently declared defiantly to someone who was telling me to paint more portraits that I was intent on painting more of my botanicals, only to realize a few days later I had an awful hankering to paint a person. The thing is, mind you, that there really is a difference between painting commissioned portraits and simply painting people. Don’t get me wrong, I do love the challenge of painting portraits. But I love painting people in my own, more naturalistic hand, letting the basic geometric forms of the face come forward. This painting, of my husband, is only a few hours in and probably a few hours from finished. Still, I don’t plan on polishing it a whole lot.
You really captured Tom. That’s what I love about your portraits.