There are times when I sit to paint, my mind is spinning rapidly. Other times, my mind cannot hold a single thought. I live for those days that fall in between the two. On days when my mind is peaceful, I find myself extremely curious to see what I can paint. For when my mind is at peace, the paint and palette knives take over.
“Playful”, was created on one of those days. I had my paints out, my knives at the ready. Difficult to choose which hue to begin with first. Just for fun, I closed my eyes and shuffled my tubes of paint around, choosing blindly. Opening my eyes, the chosen paint for my background was blue. Closing my eyes once again, I mixed up the tubes and blindly chose another hue. Aqua. Closing them and following the same process once more, yellow.
Blue. Aqua. Yellow. Quite a trio to begin working with. As I painted the background with my long palette knife, the strokes were even, rhythmic. I needed to do something different as I added more layers of various paints onto the canvas. I had a long, skinny and very pointed palette knife staring at me as I painted. I swear it called out to me, “Me! Me! Use me!” (No, not really but it did continually catch my eye as I painted).
As multiple layered hues were painted upon the canvas, I caved in, picking it up and holding it in my hand, staring at it. What could I do with it? Twirling it between my fingers to get a better feel of its weight, I began to gently paint with it in the many layers of wet paint. A swirl here. A swoosh there. The multiple hues began to blend in with one another in the most satisfying of ways.
At first, the overall feeling of this painting feels dull? Muted? Then I began to look closer. Blended but not blended; secondary and tertiary hues subtle yet strong. The beauty of this painting – the fine details of the blending of the hues. Look closely to see. The long thin palette knife brought out the color in a way that I could not imagine. I love playing with color.
This abstract ships framed with deep, richly painted black sides and a bright white front (not shown in images). The abstract is signed, titled and dated on the back and ships with a Certificate of Authenticity. By signing the painting on the back this allows the painting’s orientation to be rotated in any one of four directions as desired. This textured alla prima, acrylic abstract is painted on stretched canvas, with palette knives, and a gloss varnish was added upon completion, conveying a state of wetness. Canvas measures 11″ x 14″ in size.
Screen image is representative of the original painting; color may differ slightly from screen to original artwork.
