Partnered, egg tempera on calfskin parchment, 4 1/2 x 5 5/8 inches.Partnered, dark and dramatic, is very different from the bright simplicity of my last painting White Triangle. It is not a flat image, as are many of my paintings, but is seen from below and has a form thrusting out toward the picture plane. I like working on very different kinds of compositions, so as to constantly challenge myself, and in order to explore a range of moods and feelings. It might seem strange to think of paintings of farm implements as having feeling, but I certainly hope that they do, just as non-objective painting does.
In this detail you can get a sense of the surface of the parchment and of the paint. Matter of fact, I had a hard time photographing without glare; I have a new camera which wants to pick up every teeny surface imperfection. The background color that you see is darker than I'd originally painted; I wanted to heighten the drama, the sense of lighted forms emerging from gloom. This painting is the first in a series of three that picture handles of some sort, a theme that appeared, unbidden, among my photographs.
I can just see some farmer trying to reach up there a shift that lever. Well done.
ReplyDeleteThis is a wonderfully moody painting. Nicely done!
ReplyDeletesuch drama! but well staged. if these forms were brightly colored I would see the gesture as comic - but here, a slight but painful rebuttal is depicted. I say this knowing that nothing of the sort is being depicted, it's my own imagination participating in my visual experience - isn't this what keeps art alive?
ReplyDeletethanks so much, Lisa and Philip and rappel. I love reading that you see this as drama, and love thinking, as rappel suggests, of this as painted in bright yellow and orange and how different it would be: comic indeed. And hurrah to visual imagination.
ReplyDeleteDrama! was my first thought, too. And I love that yellow/dark yellow/olive green/real gold group of colors.
ReplyDeletethank you, Susan. I had fun mixing those colors, keeping the greens warm in hue.
ReplyDelete