coming together

In the last post (May 23d) before teaching the high school class, I ended with the remark that my fundamentals, as I have defined them, seem to be abstract design, color, and marks, and that "it is time I tied them to my inner vision of what I want to express."

I now think, after a few weeks' hiatus, that I have been separating these questions too much from those of my subject matter, and that I really do need to bring the two sides of my painting together.  It makes sense to consider design, color, and marks within the parameters of what I want to paint about. If my passion is to portray my reaction, emotion, ideas about the land around me, it makes sense to marry that with the elements that I choose to use.  I have written about this before, with reference to Rebecca Crowell's "Form and Content" distinction, and really all I am doing here is recording that this is something that I hope to address actively during this weekend's workshop in Wisconsin.  More later.

Above is a recent, hasty, non-abstract, cold wax 20"x20" painting that I obliterated the next day with a layer of cobalt blue.