September 27, 2012

A New Painting: "Two Circles"


Two Circles, egg tempera on calfskin parchment, 9 x 6 3/4 in. 


While working on this painting I decided to move it away from the real world and closer to a stranger and more abstract one; I eliminated two bolts that were centered just above the two circles in the original image. The bolts were detailed and specific; without them the composition becomes a more generalized one, though still having illusionistic form and light. I like the tall verticality of the painting, the blue and green rectangles, ending in the warm-colored circles above horizontals.


Two Circles detail


Two Circles detail


I've posted these two details hoping to give you a better sense of the paint surface (click to enlarge). When I work on a painting with large flat surfaces I often flick my brush in a painterly way, using subtle variations of the main color; with humor, I like to think of these areas as my miniature painterly abstractions.


4 comments:

  1. This one is a surprise! I like its doubleness and its very calm symmetry, which somehow has a lot of energy in it.

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    1. Thanks, Susan. I'd like to think that leaving out those bolts made the painting more surprising.

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