Graphite and watercolor

This looks to me like something done in the 1940's by someone else.  Ever had that experience?  Not too original I guess but I do like the colors.  It was done so long ago that I almost feel I could be objective about it!

New things done in the last two weeks or so

"Ok, so I like to paint."

"Well, what kind of painting do you like to do?"

"Actually, whatever kind of painting I do when I am doing it!"

I think each picture is sort of an experiment in and of itself. Although my marks may have some common features from picture to picture I really see each piece as an adventure, an effort in fact, to pull out something new....maybe fewer gestures to reveal my impression of whatever the subject is? And at the same time I am learning the expressive language of the brush and combinations, juxtapositions of colors.

Sometimes I am looking at someone or something; on other occasions I reach into my imagination or assess the work as I am doing it looking for direction from the colors and lines. How wonderful!!

I don't think there is a "best" art-making situation or experience; the results vary regardless of the set-up, locatation, presence of another; what seems to matter is just the continuous "making", the effort to do it (effort is a synonym for pushing paint with brush). All anyone has to do is paint, if that is what they want to do. Me, I like to paint.

Recent figures

Each of these sketches was done quickly using watercolor and/or gouache and at least in one instance graphite. Something like three to five minute poses and the work was done on mat board.

When I look at them they strike me as efforts to order lines, curves and volumes. In that process there seems to be a dividend paid (at least it seems to me that one is paid!). Each piece seems to have a "weight", a certain personality, something projected or withheld by the subject which, again, it seems to me transcends the conscious effort to organize lines, volume, etc. Art making is exciting that way!

She reminds me of Wyeth's Helga

Wyeth, in something that I recall reading, referred to himself as making abstract work. That may or may not be a difficult self-observation for some to swallow. I can see it, I think; his work was so amplified, super-real at times, that it seems he went beyond duplicating what was before him. The lines (which of course don't exist in the observable world) that he was required to make to construct the image expressed a quality in the subject separate from the subject itself. I think that is abstraction. When I made this I was attuned to what I felt; an energy, attitude or emotion, an ethereal expression.