one step follows another

Diane's 16 web

It all feels experimental these days. I begin each painting with the scary but exciting sensation that I have no idea what I’m doing. This is clearly not completely true, but there is a kernel of truth in it that I think is vital because that’s where play and experimentation live.

Since each day’s work changes what came before, I have started taking a pic at the end of each painting session. Grouped together, as in the evolution of “Diane’s Anna” above, it gives me some record of how the painting unfolded. I am experimenting all the time. What happens if I do this? What happens if I try that? I do have to attend carefully to textures, as they persist through color, and I need them to support the final portrait, but otherwise, I love that I work in oil and I can paint over something, and then paint over it again, and again. Translucency is an extraordinary thing.

(African elephant from the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore) 48 x 48, oil on canvas, 2016 SOLD

I wish the subtleties of color that are in the paintings themselves showed in the images I post online, but they don’t. I would need to lighten the image to reveal them, but that distorts the image. Trust me when I say there are fabulous complexities of purples in the shadows on the right. Really there are. Really.

One response to “one step follows another”

  1. Anne E. Gifford says:

    Dawn, this is incredible!!!! I love seeing how the oils allow the image to morph and change, and how you did that…wow!!!! I’m hoping to get your art posts…have been missing out!

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