I did not really have anything too serious to blog about today so I decided to comment on the fact that spring is actually here, and though it has not felt like it lately, today I noticed the trees budding and was struck by the fact that soon I will loose access to much of my subject matter. I prefer, artistically, the bare trees. To me leaves hid the figure of the tree much like a clothed model to a figure artist. So, I have been snapping as many photos as I can. Of course I would prefer to work from life. My dilemma is that when the trees are bare it is often too cold, and when it is warm the trees are concealed by masses of leaves. Who knows, maybe I will adopt foliage into my work. Things change and evolve so quickly with me that I have trouble anticipating what I will be doing a few month from now.
At the moment, however, it is just the skeletal structure that fascinates me, and I have been painting it against a flat abstracted ground that uses the paint as subject and the negative shapes around the tree. The tree, then exists in a void and that void has no depth. The tree sits even with the paint. It has a very contemporary look to it, but I am trying to find ways to may the ground more interesting as subject itself, rather than just filler. I have been experimenting with brush stroke and subtle hue variation. Color is everything in these pieces. The colors of the tree are often in stark contrast to the colors of the negative space, and that relationship tells the whole painting, The subject is definitely also color. But I still struggle from letting it get too wild and contrasted. I constantly have to go back and tone things down, otherwise the noise of everything cancels everything else out.
Just some ramblings.