I was not planning on doing any more paintings until after Caiti's wedding, with everything that needs to be done in preparation for that, but I was inpired by a friend of ours who does his paintings by starting with a black canvas. I saw his 4' x 5' painting of Copenhagen in progress the other day and have been itching to paint ever since. It goes against my grain to even use black, but if the paint is completely dry, it won't muddy up the other colors, it just shows where you don't cover it. The result is a painting with lots of contrast if you paint extra thick ....
Anyway, today I sat looking at everything that needs doing and decided I didn't want to do anything ... so I painted. While I waited for the black to dry, I cleaned a bathroom and went though and cleaned two cupboards and our medicine cabinet (all kinds of expired stuff...).
This is what resulted so far. I love the contrast that using a black canvas makes. It looks like I have a lot of detail when it is just thick paint covering the black in some orderly fashion.
There has got to be an analogy in here - about turning something dark into something colorful... I just don't have it in me today to think of anything.
"Turning something dark into something colorful" -- that is certainly one way to think about it. But it also occurs to me that in the darkness, in the shadows, in the contrast of an ideal of light we find an interesting juxtaposition of what it means to be human, to pursue our mortal knowledge, to fly like Icarus between immortality and the grave ... and be burned, but in the process creating our own beauty from our own lights, and this in contrast to some ideal, as a blessing only we can give on our own ragged selves.
ReplyDeleteThat is another way to look at it. I was thinking more in terms of how Christ can take something so dark as my sinful soul and change it into something beautiful. You are right, though, our true selves do show intermixed with the beauty light brings and the contrast defines who we are as individuals and makes us each intricately unique. Some people are monotone in color, some are full spectrum but all have a degree of darkness that the light brings out. The brighter the light, the stronger the shadow. The one thing fundamental in color, though, is that light is necessary if we are to have any perception of color at all. Color comes from light and what is not absorbed is reflected.
ReplyDeleteDidn't Icarus fly too close too the sun, melt his wings and fall into the sea, both of which his father warned him not to fly to close to... yes, he gained his immortality in the grave as a sea is named after him, but he lost the freedom from imprisonment that his father was giving him. I might have that all wrong, I'm not big on Greek mythology, I just looked it up on Wikipedia. :-)
I think it's pretty
ReplyDeleteTHANKS, Tim! that was my main goal
ReplyDelete:-) .