I have been painting in response to watching too much CNN. On Wednesday as the mobs raged in Washington I grabbed a canvas panel and started splashing and dripping, tilting the panel to control the direction of the flow.
Inverting the painting it looked like things growing upwards. Somehow it seemed to go with the chaotic revolt on the TV. I was reminded of Umberto Boccioni- “The City Rises”.
I worked on the ambiguous shapes with a small brush to make them stronger and added more thin washes with a large flat brush to suggest flames. I decided to keep this image restricted to magenta and cool blue, with white.
Enjoying the flow of drips, I took an old still life painting and decided to add drips without covering the old painting first.
I tried to make it more obscure by painting out some of the background. It looks like a sack of fruit now. It is a jumble and that both offends and intrigues me.
I started another, dripping red, blue, yellow and white at the same time.
On its side it gives a sense of speed. Much more to be done here.
Another start, with a circular aspect.
More slashed added, and a random bar as contrast.
More work on the background. Don't know where this is heading
Realising the problems when the background is white, I created a quick ocean effect in Ultramarine blue and white, then I did some leaning drips of the same blue. This is running the risk of playing safe with a tasteful colour scheme. I must think of a way of bringing it to life.
What I need to explain is that this way of painting requires drying off between stages. So doing several pictures at the same time is a good way of keeping going. I have been laying them in front of the gas fire to dry. It is a good place for standing back and wondering what comes next.
I added a few other recent invented paintings to this floor gallery. I do hope to do some more developed work someday. At the moment I am enjoying the feeling of flitting from image to image, not really knowing what I am doing.
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