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Thursday, August 27, 2009

White objects + Stacked Objects=Quite a Challenge

Precarious Stack of Vintage Bowls   watercolor   12.5 x 9
I love setting up painting challenges for myself. And I love stacks of things. My husband and I are stackers.....mostly stuff we are studying....books, magazines, reference materials and the like. Simply put, we are "pile people". In fact, when we are having company, we scurry around looking for places to hide our stacks. Stacks are always precarious, moveable, shiftable. And I like white dinnerware.....always have. No fancy patterns for me. I like that clean background look for the palette of food colors. White objects pick up colors from their surrounds that are reflected onto them. Rarely does an object register as pure white.....usually only in a highlight area. So, considering my fondness for stacked things, and white dinnerware, why not combine the two for an ultimate painting challenge? I really like this painting. There is something raw about it. I am usually very disappointed when I go too far with refinement. That is a very very very fine line. The values on the white bowl have been exaggerated a bit. All paintings are autobiographical to some degree, even if we consider just the selection process of the subject matter. "Precarious Stack of Vintage Bowls" is even more so. It has my name written all over it.