The day after my partner's nephew's wedding in CT the family was trading Ziplock bags of family photos. One photo that passed by me captivated my brain and I kept a close watch on it to make sure it was going home with us.
The slightly yellowed colors gave it a unity, the random cropping had stumbled into some kind of non-linear narrative and geese are one of my recuring themes anyway. I immediately knew the painting's size was to be 36"x22". I had a stretched linen already prepared and Monday morning I adjusted the design and roughed it out in grissaille, a practice I rarely do but there were drawing complexities involved and wanted to lock in the composition. This way I hope to concentrate on the color design when I'm painting.
A found photograph is like any found object or subject for painting except that it's already reduced to two dimensions. The challenge is to use the photo, like any subject matter, as a point of departure and not to copy it, but to try and find what triggered my interest and to explore that.
1 comment:
Looking pretty interesting Mr. Smith~!
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