The Work is Finished

FINISHED PAINTING 

Reference photo

It is obvious there is a notable difference between my finished painting and my reference photo....two almost invisible footprints have been added in the painted piece!  Here is the story of why I put them there-----

Garbage is being dumped every day in our streams, rivers, and oceans and I am compelled to record this situation in my current body of work.  The particular oil painting you see above is based on one of more than 100 photos taken of trash I found along the beach outside of Hoi An, Vietnam. As I quietly painted, I realized that there just has to be a story to tell about each of these remnants of plastic, rubber, and other such waste.  
When I first began the painting on a blank 55" x 55" piece of gessoed watercolor paper, I intended to paint just a shredded flip-flop stuck in the sand. As I neared completion of the work, the news of protests emerging from Egypt, Libya, Wisconsin, etc., and also reports of some of the protesters dying in the Middle East, became incredibly disturbing and created in me an immense sense of sadness and loneliness.  I began to also be aware that my painting was lacking something and was empty except for the one flip-flop in the center of the page.  

Slowly, I conjectured a story surrounding the black flip-flop I was reproducing on paper.  It could have belonged to someone who died for a cause.  I then felt compelled to add the two faint footprints in the sand heading to the bottom of the paper--thereby implying that the person who had worn this tattered flip-flop could stand up and walk away to reclaim her/his inalienable right to freedom. 

Left Alone

These last few days distractions were more appealing to me than continuing to work on my painting of the lonely flip-flop left alone on a beach in SE Asia.  I am not sure why it is such a major challenge to be creative--to make something out of nothing!?  Seems as though it is so much easier to do familiar tasks:  washing dishes; organizing a drawer; driving someplace, talking on the phone, etc.  Nevertheless, when I finally hunkered down and began to splatter hundreds of drops of oil paint on the paper with my huge brush,  I became energized and forgot about the distractions.
The drops represent the sand but I chose not to cover the entire 55" x 55" piece of paper with these drops as I wanted to leave some mystery lurking on the perimeter of the work.  While painting,  I listened to lots of Leonard Cohen!
I finished the underside of the lone rubber flip-flop and really liked the result.  The colors used were those on my reference photo--blues, greens, yellows, black, brown, white, etc.  I figured all these colors were there because,  despite the fact the flip-flop had been tossed in the seas for what must have been a long time, colorful seaweed and other living organisms attached themselves to the sole and went on a journey with this piece of deserted trash.  My imagination went along for the ride!
At the point that I stopped working in order for the oil paint to dry,  I stepped back and ruefully noticed that the entire design on this large piece of paper seemed non-eventful.  My eye went only to the flipflop--and that was it!  Nothing more--something was missing--something was lacking.
My next blog will show you what I did to help allay the feeling of emptiness and aloneness.  For now, here are two photos of what I did recently.

Here is the full painting at this point:

Here is a close-up of the bottom of the flip-flop!

Patterns in the Sand

While working on my painting depicting a lonely flip flop found on a beach near Hoi An, Vietnam, I found myself having a dialogue with the natural elements.  For example:  "Sand, why did you half bury this tattered shoe?  Why do you have subtle patterns flowing around you?"  "South China Sea, did you toss this lost shoe all around during a violent storm?  Did you ever wonder what happened to its owner?  Where did you fling the mate to this flip flop"? and on and on....
The other day, I showed my earlier blog about the beginning of this particular painting to a person who said she began to ask similar questions about the singular flip flop tossed upon the beach.
My hope is that the painting, when finished, will be strong enough to evoke a sense of wondering and questioning.
Today, I brushed on a wash made up of varnish and turpentine mixed with the colors of indigo, white, and burnt sienna oil paint.  Sometimes when I look at sand on a beach, my eye just barely notices the overall color.  But today, after really studying my reference photo, I saw numerous linear patterns caused by the water and air movement in and over the sand.  I wanted to include these in the art work, so I added some directional lines.  After putting on the very wet wash, drips began coming down on the paper and I liked that effect.  For now, the flip flop drawing is still covered with a resist plastic which will come off at some point to reveal a white space.  Later on I will paint that area black.
The photo of the painting you see here was taken while today's work was still wet.  The view is from the side of the piece so you could see the paper actually hanging on the wall.

The challenge of writing a blog about creating this painting helps me to examine more intensely my entire creative process.  It is so interesting how many thoughts quietly appear while making art.  It is a meditation. This is especially so today as rain has been steadily falling all day and there is also a rare dusting of snow on the mountains nearby.  The grayness adds to the mystery and beauty of it all.

New Painting-New Direction-New Series-New Year!

For the past three years, I used oil paints, watercolors, and even plastic collage pieces in my artwork which was inspired by a brief and exciting trip to Iceland.   Realistic landscapes and figures were the predominant theme early on in the series, but gradually the compelling and majestic beauty of Icelandic glaciers, and the surrounding deep blue waters, became the subject matter.  The work, as it progressed, evolved into larger abstract pieces.  During those many quiet moments of painting, when my thoughts roamed here and there, I became more aware of, and concerned about, pollution and the melting of glaciers due to global warming.  In the very last paintings of what I called The Iceberg Series (which numbered 35 pieces), I adhered pieces of painted plastic on the icebergs--reflecting a worry that maybe someday all the millions of pounds of minute plastic trash now collecting in the oceans would eventually evaporate and fall back to the earth as snow or rain.  We could then have icebergs made of plastic!  I realize that this is a hypothetical situation--but that is the direction where my artistic imagination carried me!
A reason for the ending of my Iceberg Series is largely because of my recent visit to Southeast Asia.  Part of the trip included travel along the coastal waters of the South China Sea, the Gulf of Thailand and the Mekong Delta.  I was disturbed by the omnipresent plastic trash I saw floating in all those waters.  Garbage, always wrapped in plastic bags, also decorated the shores and waters of the great inland lake in Cambodia--Lake Tonal Sap.  Furthermore, my stay along the beach near Hoi An upset me because of the huge quantity of trash strewn everywhere along the sand.  I took more than 100 photos of this trash--most of it plastic--in less than 200 yards of beachfront.
So now, upon returning home, I have started a series of paintings based on the photos taken of this trash. Sadly to me, I will not be using my favorite blues I brushed on in my iceberg work.  I am changing my palette entirely--a big challenge to me.  We will see what happens!  I am hoping that maybe, some day, a few of my paintings will help focus attention on the menace of the ubiquitous presence of plastic and its improper disposal.
The first painting, which I will probably title "The Deserted Flip Flop" is being painted with oils on gessoed 150lb watercolor paper, 55" x 55".  The top photo you see on the blog is my reference photo.  The bottom one shows the result of my beginning two days of painting.  I initially put a light coat of ultramarine on the paper, and then, after it dried, I brushed on a burnt sienna-yellow ochre mix.  The flip flop is there, but barely discernible at this point.  Right now it is a piece of plastic stuck on the paper as a resist. You can tell from the reference photo that the flip flop is mostly black, and eventually my painting will have a black one one in it!
Welcome to my journey in this new series.  Let's see where it will go!