The Week's Work

I started this week's painting with a theme; my imaginary landscape of Cape Cod of a hundred years ago or more inspired by the books of Joseph C Lincoln. Having never been to Cape Cod, and in any event, unable to travel back in time to the point where Joe Lincoln's stories where set, my imaginary landscape is vivid, but rather formless. But then, most of my imaginary landscapes are -- pinning them down and making them fit into an actual picture is often surprisingly hard, if not impossible.  In any event I made several attempts, none of them completely satisfactory in pinning down my vision, though I like the paintings. I don't know what I will paint in the coming week, but I think I would like to try it a few more times.

The little Jungle Pool sketch was inspired by the stains left by acrylic paint scrapped off. It is not unusual for me to get ideas for paintings by looking at what is left after I scrapped off the paint of an idea that didn't work.

The beach and bluff piece was originally meant to be a field, but that proved too boring, so I went with a beach.  It still is rather boring, but I like the colors so I will probably keep it.

Field in Fog was this week's Friday painting. I'm thinking of making this style of painting a regular Friday feature.  I actually wouldn't mind painting them more often, but I've found that oh,so promising ideas which I think I could paint until the cows come home, often prove not to be the case.  So I'm thinking that it might be best if I limit myself to one painting like this a week. I have no illusions that these paintings will be met by popular acclaim but I like them a lot: I like their understatement, their sense of  quiet mystery, and to be honest, the luxury of painting paintings that please only me.

The morning version of this painting was altogether different: no fog, blueish skies and a single clump of trees on a hill. It was clear by lunch time that this was not going to work -- the design was boring for sure, but whether or not I could paint in this sketchy style without it being misty was -- an still is -- unclear. At any rate, I ended up adding the fog, and eventually repainted the whole picture.  However, even if I have to stick with fog, I think there are still plenty of paintings to paint, but as I said, we'll have to see about that...