Needed to paint something, just to keep in touch with the process as being potentially playful and ideally therapeutic. While not feeling quite up to the challenge for reasons planetary and personal. I could just as well play with paint for itself without a subject and see what develops organically, since all painting is about colour, form, and relationship, with or without a subject.
Yet i have all these flower photos, taken specifically for their vibrancy of colour, intended as a catalyst to shift my mode of mind to a lighter level of vibration. The degree of detail involved in drawing any one of them being admittedly and typically daunting and could be quite taxing,
Besides, previous paintings became progressively intensively perfectionist in attention to minutest detail and overall integration to the point of tightness even. Which can be fine and often what it takes, if you feel up to it that is.
So, for the record, despite feeling 'out of sorts' , lack of sufficient sleep for weeks, too much inconclusive and questionable internet information, uncertainty in trying to remedy a common ailment by natural means. Toxic trails turning summer skies to a grey haze and the populace oblivious, i coated a canvas in layers of white primer.
With the vaguest of light guidelines, a bold Chinese brush loaded with liquid pink, started out loose as it's possible to be, a bit wobbly even to the point of sloppy. Wondering how, if, and when, i'd paint or even write intelligibly again. The pink, possibly the singular link to the preservation and perpetuation of passion.
Then, filling in the foliage and botanical profusion in similar random fashion, dodging niggling exactitude. Only later with a fine point brush, modifying, delineating highlight and shadow, making structural sense and relationship in three-dimensional space.
Bit of a trip to say the least, and something to focus on over a couple of evenings and more, with the intention at least to not make hard work out of it. Managing somehow to loosely tie it all together into a credible momentary impression of a sunny garden.
The bright acid-pink of the actual flowers not possible to duplicate with acrylic paint, so had to imply it in the play of light through petals. It is what it is, and that's just a brief description of how it came to be, and hopefully of some help to anyone attempting such a thing.
Since then, i took a necessary break from this particular discipline and produced two paintings of a radically different and free form nature going into uncharted territory starting without subject matter other than 'something' unknown happening in an imagined space. That's a challenge of another order, not knowing where it may or may not lead to, tentatively fingers crossed watch this space. ~
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Martin Rainbowmaker.
