Bazinga!

I KNOW I SAID I WOULDN'T, BUT I GOT EXCITED:

I woke up this morning with a vision. Not of angels or demons. Not of the once young me in bronze stelleto sandles wearing a slinky, burgundy red charmuse number with a slit up the leg so high I had to wear red panties. And certainly not a vision of a hunk with a great six pack, great deltoids front, side and back above biceps that curled your toes... I woke up thinking of a large, long painting comprised of a number of 30 x 10 panels and was excited by the possibilities.

The panels could be hung in a bricklay pattern and at random. They could interplay with one another. Touching in some places, not in others.There could be voids? Then came the questions: Is the wall part of the painting? Maybe? What's the subject? Color, its spacial values. There were decisions to be made. A lot of them. Scaled drawings to be done to test the feasibility.(Scaled drawing number #1 pictured above; I made it bleed for the fun of it).

In my vision, I was obviously expanding on my ladder idea. I was building a painting. --Now just where do you think that came from? My training in sculpture? My work in construction? My design background? My love of grid systems, line and shape, forms and joinery--puzzles? Absolutely. In my sleep, my mind had put together a merger between painting and construction. Bazinga!



BUT ENOUGH WITH WHAT MIGHT BE AND BACK TO WHAT IS:

Panel Three, at this stage of the painting, clearly demonstrates the spacial values of color. The black falls back. The peachy tan holds the middle ground. The white and yellow jump forward. This is an example of the spacial values of color.

(In reality, the black in this painting is not black; it's a mix of black and dioxine purple--but you wouldn't know it unless you put a pure black painted swatch against it. Ad Reinhardt, Frank Stella and Robert Rauschenberg,Abstract Expressionists, all made black paintings that weren't black at all--but mixes of black played against each other. Though they didn't look it, the black paintings were very fragile; a finger print would mar the surface permanently).

Honey was out all day. I took the opportunity to space the three panels and hang #2. Honey hates putting nails in walls. I think nothing of it. I am an ace drywall (sheetrock) repairer. Artists have to be. We like to see what our paintings look like off the easel and hung as they should be. Looking at the three panels on the wall, I thought the edges, top and bottom, need to be treated. the lower the panels on the wall, the more they were visible. Perhaps in gradations of a dark shade? Maybe not-- the light would do that.