Dreaming

As you can see here, I have made some strong progress on my current stacked painting. It's all oil and in various stages of dryness. "So what" you say? Well, what that means to you, looking at it, is that the dark colors appear less saturated and dark because they are nearly dry. It's like a beach pebble that you pick up when wet: it's vibrant and beautiful and all the subtleties of color show. But when you get it home, it's all sort of flat and you wonder why you ever picked it up in the first place. Well.... oil without a medium is like that: when it's dries it flattens out and you can loose the true beauty of what I was seeing when I put down the wet paint. And ..that's why I varnish my paintings. It's not about "protecting them , it's about bringing back the vibrancy I put into them. So you have to imagine this with darker shadows. Still needing to be done: the yellow bowl and the rims at the bottom and the sides of the cradle panel.

So yes, I have been having fun doing this. I believe I have a client for it who already offered to pay me sight unseen. As flattering as that is, I want to make sure that she really does want it before I handle her money. When and if she loves it ; it will be hers.

I do dream in color and this week I dreamt of encaustic painting. I dreamt of a cup painting in peach, yellow and a neutralized deep rose color. I will have to paint it, I know that. I also spent the week collecting more equipment for the encaustic techniques. I have an iron, a temperature control griddle, brushes, sculpting tools and I broke down and ordered some encaustic paints. As soon as they get here..I'm gone. I'll be painting encaustic outside every day that I can . My oil artists friends are not very supportive about my new found enthusiasm for wax. I'd love to say that "they just don't understand" (because they don't) but that is too dismissive. So I am working from the assumption that they are correct: I can't do better work in encaustic than I do in oil and that I am just wasting my time. So it's up to me now to prove them all wrong.