Comfort Zones
"Lemons, Canoe, and Cigar Box" (color wash), oil on panel, 10"x10", "Lemons, Canoe, and Cigar Box" (completed painting), "Making Lemonade" (tentative title) (color wash), oil on panel, 16"x20". It can often happen when an artist goes into production mode that we can get too settled in our ways. Sometimes it takes just a little nudge to push us out of our comfort zones. In this case I had to use a square panel for this benefit show that I'm participating in. I generally use standard sizes, 9"x12", 11"x14",12"x16",16"x20", so this was a bit of a challenge to my usual "camera viewfinder "format. I know that the triangle in a square is a Renaissance tradition so I immediately thought of a setup that would mimic that. I also, because I was pressed for time, dispensed with my usual earth colored monochrome underpainting and went right into painting on the canvas with color. When I put the finishing pass over the underpainting I was amazed by the glow of the colors. I liked it so much that I'm giving it another road test in my latest painting, "Making Lemonade". I'm also playing around with my lighting in this one. The lemonade and silver bowl in the background are lit with my usual overhead system. The objects in the foreground are lit with a bulb placed so that they appear to be lit from behind. I've always wanted to do a painting with the foreground kind of shrouded in darkness . I've been carrying this one around in my head for some time so I'm glad I finally got it out, it was getting crowded in there! Anyways, I'm glad that I've departed a bit from my "comfort zone". It might not seem like such a great departure but to someone as fastidious as myself it's like leaping across a chasm.
