Bold color

c. 20" x 24"/oil on canvas

Not too subtle.  Bright.  Loud.  Bold.  She appeals to me!

More from "Productive November"!

The top drawing (charcoal and pastel) seems to me energetic and simultaneously still.  I'm captured by the ambiguity and feel satisfied that I have recorded myself in a moment I wasn't fully aware of at the time I did the picture.  Not to sound like a tired beer commercial but it actually doesn't get better than that.  Reminded of what I didn't even notice!  Or didn't dare consider?  A little like living on the edge.  That explains the energy part.
The oil portrait might have something going for it, I'm not sure.  This is how it looked about two weeks ago; I've made revisions since.  Although it isn't as loose as I might like, I've obviously taken license with color and line to fracture some of the reality....the structural, material reality...in an effort to plumb myself in the dynamic and capture something ephemeral. In my mind more important, more significant, more elusive, more satisfying than a life-like rendering.  More satisfying?  Well, maybe my satisfaction is in trying to obtain the short-lived experience and making it last.......which isn't all that different than what the representational realist has in mind but I want to remember how I felt, my emotion, my awareness.  That seems much more "active" if you will.

Recent Effort

Gouache on clayboard
c. 18" x 24"

More ink

Ink on paper

Heavy charcoal on Bee paper

2009 Charcoal

Charcoal on paper

Recent Painting

Conway
18" x 24"
Oil on canvas

Standing Figure
20" x 16"
Oil on Canvas

I think these represent a bit of a new direction for me.  They have modernist and expressive elements I'd like to cultivate and grow in work going forward.  The landscape is finished and I've launched some other canvases in a similar style.  The figure is nearing completion.

Expressive

18" x 20"
Oil on canvas

Portrait

18 x 20
Oil

I've pushed paint around on this picture for far too long.  I think she's done...maybe a few little jabs with the brushes but maybe not, too.  I want to do more oil portraits, get my hand, arm and head (mostly) to loosen up and get out of the tight zone!!!!!! I like the detail here and I dislike it too.  Ah, the totally ambivalent painter.