A New Painting: "Handle and Holes"

Handle and Holes, egg tempera on calfskin parchment, 5 3/8 x 6 inches.

Here is the second of three paintings that I'm doing on the theme of handles; you can see the previous painting, titled Partnered here. I realize you might not believe me, but until I began working on this image I didn't see how amusingly sexual it was. It's perfectly fine for you all to laugh, because I think humor is welcome in this case. I also felt that I was painting something very cartoonish, with those googly eyes at bottom. So, a cartoonish sexy picture, painted in solemn dark reds (though red of course is the color of blood and passion). I wonder how this would have looked in perky yellow or bouncy blue; a little silly?




In this detail you can see some of the subtle variation in color in the reds that I painted in order to make the surface more lively; not too much to call attention to it, but enough so that the shapes have a sense of weight and presence. When I look at this picture, I begin to accept that I'm not yet a minimalist painter; I've got too many other pictorial notions bubbling up.