Day 1

Last Thursday, when my hopes for a break were dashed by an invitation to participate in a group show, I was completely overwhelmed by what's ahead of me in the next few months. Eight large sized paintings to be painted and delivered by October 4 and then another show to prepare for immediately after that would surely send me over the edge right? That's what I thought, except after puttering around in my studio for the last few days, making space for the new works and preparing the panels, I am actually pretty excited about this! Although I paint barns fairly often I haven't done a lot of them lately and I certainly haven't done any really larger sized ones recently. After going through my barn photo stash, I realized that because of the panel size, I could paint a few barns that I usually pass over because they hadn't seemed appropriate for a small scale format. A few of the barns have signs on them which I am really looking forward to including as well (often I eliminate the signs in the smaller pieces).

I thought that I would have to limit my posting here for the next 2 weeks but now I am thinking that I might just track this whole thing on the blog. It may be just pictures on some days, however less yakking from me might be a refreshing change of pace. heh. And I will probably be showing mostly long shots of the paintings because, and don't take this personally, I don't really like to discuss my actual painting process too much. Kinda spoils the mood for me, know what I mean? But if you have any questions, go ahead and ask and I might answer.

So here we go.

On Sunday I gessoed eight panels. Monday morning I had to sand them a bit, not too much though, I like the texture of the brush marks, plus I am kind of lazy. I narrowed down the images I felt like doing, which can vary depending on how I feel on any given day. I managed to complete 6 under paintings on Monday. Five are barns, one is a large landscape meant for Salt Meadow Gallery. Just to throw a wrench in the works, I still have to meet a few other obligations, including new work to Harrison Gallery next week. Luckily, I have about eight under paintings already prepared that I will work on while the barn under paintings dry over the next few days. So I am feeling pretty good about getting those done. Anyway, as usual, I am feeling exhilarated after completing a new batch of under paintings and at this point everything looks really good and positive. One problem is again, the size of my studio. I have picture rails up on the walls where I keep the work in progress. It's a good way to also see if I need to fix anything before the paint sets up, as sometimes I miss really obvious things and looking at them on the wall helps with that. Unfortunately, because I have limited space and since I have 6 large pieces going all at once, they are all sitting vertically, while the images are horizontal. Since it's not usually a good idea to move them around too much while they are drying, I am just going to have to cross my fingers and hope that I didn't miss anything this time.