Landscape #2

Finally, I had a five-hour stint of work time Sunday and got the 2nd Landscape well on its way. This image is based on the huge philodendrons that grow in the garden behind our place in south Florida. I took a number of photos from my porch/studio, enlarged them, squared each off, and enlarged one on to the three by four foot canvas. I may do others from this group or I may move on to other photos that I shot of nature. These paintings are based on 5 layers of transparent acrylic that build to create hundreds of not thousands of colors, much like a computer printer does by layering cyan, magenta, yellow and black inks. However, I work in washes of yellow, green blue, purple, and red pigment instead of tiny dots. I paint into water sometimes or I quickly lay water next to wet paint. Sometimes I use a hair drier to make the paint dry in splotches and/or run. Each layer of paint must dry thoroughly before the next is put on the canvas in order to prevent new paint from picking up the old.

I don’t know why I so often choose techniques that are slow going, or why I can’t stay with one technique. I have good company however, just look at the varied body of work Picasso left behind, though I am a minor entity next to the great master. You see, this group of landscape paintings is but one of three different bodies of work I have been working on during the past five years; 1) mixed media distressed paintings titled the LGBTQ Pictionary, 2) The huge abstracted acrylic paintings of iconographic celebrities, and 3) this series of acrylic landscapes.