Representational Paintings

#13. Transcendence

28"x24" 1/99 Oil on Canvas

This one began as an urge to do a sun with radiating light coming out from it and slowly changing colors outward, a fairly simple painting. As I put the base background wash on, a golden color, two forms seemed to appear in the middle, and I couldn’t seem to get rid of them. So I thought "Oh, they want to be in the picture." This put a wrench in the whole works. I had been happily on this path of fun abstract paintings, and my ability to render human form was weak; I had great fear there, as I had not been seriously developing this skill. So I had to decide whether or not they were to be clothed, and felt like they wanted to be nude, and I struggled with this idea briefly ("what would people think") until my mother said that the nude form was more timeless. That clenched it. So I had to get some books on anatomy, pictures of people, and start putting together a couple of hopefully believeable figures. But I think they really add to the whole image.