Day 11

Hillside with Purple Trees, 2006, Oil on Panel, 18x24






Thursday I finished up painting the cradles and put labels on the backs of a number of the finished paintings. I also had to pack up and ship out a painting to a client. It was sort of a commission. I say sort of because I tend to avoid typical commissions, which are just way too much pressure for me. In this case, the clients had seen a painting at the Harrison Gallery that they liked, but it was on a cradled panel and they wanted it in a frame. While the gallery director and I were emailing about putting a frame on it, another customer came into the gallery and bought the painting. So the client wondered if I could do a similar painting on a framed panel. The image was an image I felt comfortable doing again, as most of you may know, I often paint the same imagery many times, so I agreed to try. I did two paintings. They both had the same composition which was easy enough. However, I wasn't too sure that the color would be the same as the first piece. It is exceedingly difficult to match colors when doing glazes, there are so many variables and I don't keep track of the colors that I use, preferring to wing it. For some reason though, I was able to get the colors very close and I was pretty impressed, if not too comfortable with copying my own work. Felt a bit hinky, you know? Anyway, to comfort myself, I used entirely different colors on the other one (pictured above), Harrison Gallery liked it as well and is taking it in the group of paintings that I will be giving them next week. Ok, long story about one little thing that I had to do yesterday. Sorry...I have been so cooped up and haven't talked to too many humans lately.

I finally got to work in the studio in the afternoon, but I felt extremely restless and not really focused. I worked for short bits of time, finishing one section and then getting up to check for eggs in the henhouse (no more since the first one a few days ago), check emails, talk with Doug, wash our long haired cat's bottom after an unfortunate bout of diarrhea, or any number of other things. I tend to work in this manner when I am not feeling so rushed or pressured so I guess this is all good.

I worked on only one painting though, and it's one that has a sign in it so it will need much more work in that area. I think I like this although I am not too sure about the purple foreground (sorry about the bad photo-it's not really a good representation of the colors at all). I used purple because most of the other paintings in this group have green or yellow/green land and I wanted to do something different. I plan to work on the sky more so perhaps a deeper blue in that area will balance out the purple a bit. But I do like how the purple looks with the light and shadow colors on the barn, so I think I want to keep it no matter how improbable a solid purple field may be. Realism isn't really my ultimate goal here obviously.