Silence, White, Character

I'm painting on a smooth 22 x 28 birch board and I Love the way the oils glide over the surface. It's my structure of choice but I usually go with canvas simply because it can hang without a frame. I painted this board in 2005 ...I can tell it's an older piece because there is no texture to it. Speaking of texture, my palette knife is missing!!

Travis usually tries to stop me when I start painting over an older piece. He looked at this one and said, "Now there's a painting you can go over!" It's so nice to see progress in my work. It's also a little unnerving to think I'm constantly going to want paintings back to rework!!

I've switched to classical music listening because my other choices were beginning to sound like noise. I need the enunciation of the classical variety to aid in clarity as I add layers. This painting is much like the piano music that's playing. I keep adding strokes of paint: ochre, umber, cerulean and sienna but it's the white that needs to remain crisp. The other colors mix and create harmonies but the white creates the overall affect ...just as silence creates structure in music.

White, silence ...much like character. No matter how much noise, how many times life strokes us with details (bills, conflicts, errands, responsibilities, blessings, relationships, etc) --if you know your character and what you're capable of ...if you keep that pure and true, the overall picture has structure and beauty.

Comforting to know that my style is continuing to develop and I can rework past pieces to give them more texture and stronger character!! Some former pieces remain the same and I'm happy with them, some will be tossed or reworked but all of them have their purpose. My whites may not always have been so crisp but I'm getting a better grasp of it's purpose!