“Floating Barn in a Color-filled Sea”

This watercolor was begun over a year years ago and when I reached complete frustration, I put it aside.
This drama is not unusual. So I work on more than one painting at a time.
My pleasure in painting is the color I love to play in not the process of painting a painting.

I enjoy seeing images emerge as I rarely plan. Drawing is not my thing. What I want to do is splash paint around. I prefer to use it’s magic as it dances with water on the page. The dance is the painting. It’s a sort of alchemy. As the images emerge, I feel the urge to pursue what I see and might throw in a line here or there.  But usually not.

Rather unprofessional…………?

With this painting, I did not like the barn image once I painted it in so I scrubbed away some of the lovely color and then, in true bipolar fashion,  added more.

Then scrubbed it away
….again.

I imagined walking through fields much like I do most days.
In my world, the bright green grasses are quickly fading to gold and brown in the hot California sun.

Not feeling any need to stick with “reality” {whatever that is…} I cut stencils to remove more paint and create the sinuous line snaking diagonally across the paper.
I do not know exactly why but once done, there was my path. And my fields. And hills.

Then I flipped the painting upside down. I liked that composition more tho I was not the composer.

A canyon.
It is the descent into the deepest blues and violets, lightened with the light of pale green and pink.

Now it begins….