I am on a mission to simplify my painting. I have become swamped with details and everything has suffered. The paint was dull the compositions fussy. Now, I feel I have a special filter I can employ and everything is reduced to it’s most rudimentary elements.
For example, take one of the last paintings I did in the downtown studio just as the COVID-19 quarantine was coming down.
It’s not a bad painting, but it’s not great either. The slickness of the panels makes it hard to give marks any sort of character without spreading on the paint.
Since I have been researching Richard Diebenkorn and Leo Garel I have looked at the landscape differently. I would repaint all my paintings if I could.
Not only is it the same composition and subject, I simply painted over the panel because the ground color I used was semi-transparent.
I frosted the panel with basic colors while the earlier attempts at the courtyard informed the steps. I was moving from complicated to simple rather than the other way around.
I imagine the preciousness of all this is a bit much, but I am in my 34th day of social isolation and I think I’ve been holding up pretty darned well.