Today I killed two paintings and was almost killing the third one. Killing painting I guess is a part of “painting”. Perfectionism is my old friend. But the third one ended up in a better shape than the previous version. Then I relaxed, finally. Stravinsky. My old crazy friend. The name of the painting is “the rite of spring”, my favorite song.
Yesterday night I was looking at the paintings that I have uploaded on my website and then I realized I didn’t like some of it and wanted make some changes.
Today I changed one of them at school, which I believe ended up okay. The painting was too dispersed before; I needed to add some contrast to keep the focus in the middle of the painting and silence the noise on the edges. Isn’t it true that having one focus the key for everything? One big message, otherwise you dilute what you say.
Of course I didn’t stop there and go home happily, as my mind was full of crap today, I needed to paint but didn’t know how/what. I worked on some of the “gravity” paintings that I haven’t uploaded yet. Tried to make another dispersed painting into a focused one, it was almost getting there but then my old friend perfectionism kicked in and I killed the painting. I just painted white all over of it and went home.
My plan was to read a book and sleep early but of course I started to work on one of the “gravity” paintings which was bugging me and needed to change it. I spend maybe non-stop 2 hours. Yes, I am talking about “the rite of spring” piece. Two abstract flowers were bugging me, I didn’t know how to change it so I started trying. I put more white to the flowers, then neon purple, wiped it, then violet purple and green, wiped it. Again white… Whatever I did, didn’t look good. It was the end of the rite of spring, which means that I was working on it 30 mins at least. I stop listening and covered the painting with white. Then I got upset and cleaned the white part with turpentine. Decided to leave it as it is and sat down in front of it for a little. Then I decided to try one more time and told myself if this doesn’t work, I will wipe again and go to sleep.
I covered the edges of the painting with titanium white diluted with a lot of oil, just like a making a frame to the painting. I put back my headphones again, Stravinsky getting crazier on my ears. I slowly wiped some of the white frame but left the key parts there. Suddenly the painting looked better to me! Now the painting has a more abstract touch, connecting two flowers and a focus point in the painting that guide your eyes into the middle. Also, as I used excess oil to have a white-wash feeling, the gravity started to paint itself, nothing could be better than watching it.
Also the painting with white brush strokes really reminds me Matisse’s famous painting, Dance. The abstracted flowers actually could be people, hand-in-hand, dancing, nothing could better fit to the rite of spring…
