Variations

The above is a block in started yesterday and sort of finished today, maybe. I painted with Don Sondag (amazing painter) and Stacy Barter (amazing painter) in a little park not 1 mile from the studio. Don tackled a 24x30 and I went for a 20x24, Stacy a 12x16. All good starts. Today Don and I returned to finish what we started.

Painting Florida, unless you are on the beach, usually means having to deal with complicated patterns, which I like, but knowing when too much is too much is tough. That's why it's good to have extra eyeballs to point out how the painting is working or how it's not. Here's the next layer of paint from today.

There is a thing about painting outside that keeps me from overthinking, especially in a situation like this where the micro-decisions start to take the fore in the brain. The nice thing about a big loose block in one day and the detail stuff the next is that you have some time to consider the big picture. Still it takes a while to process what works and what doesn't. I sent a pic of what I'd done today to a friend with a great eye I really trust, Hai-ou Hou. She was trained as an abstract artist and can see stuff right away that I would never have seen. She says. "take out the middle thing". I did see that, just hadn't gotten to it yet. "And take out the light in the corner, don't need it." and thanks to the miracle of photoshop, I did. Kind of... I moved the middle thing over to change the pattern of verticals and diminished the light in the corner.

Then she said, "Crop off the right side, it is more beautiful without the distraction of all the light on the right." Okay. I'm not one to pull a canvas off the stretchers and restretch it. it's not that the painting is that precious, it's just that I'm too lazy. Unless it's on gator board and then, easy-peezy, whack and it's done. Or I can do it without consequence in photoshop and put up all the variations to see which works best.

I know she is right about one thing or the other, I'm just going to let it sit for a while and think on it too much. Just like always. I'll post whatever I do.