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The Shavingbrush Tree
April 9, 2009
The Shavingbrush Tree in front of a flowering Jacaranda tree seen in Chapala, Mexico, 85H x 45W x 3D inches acrylics on canvas, wrapped sides painted, work in progress. Thumbnail, left: started March 31st
The last painting helped me more aware of how powerful contrasts of light and dark can be. Here, areas of primer will be purposely be left unpainted. I was going to just carefully avoid the white areas and paint around them, but during the second phase I dripped some of the masking fluid to block out a few details in the main flowers. Already it is a very different painting process-wise; right from the start it has felt like a complicated puzzle; that stage doesn’t usually appear until near finishing. The first stages of painting are usually the most liberating but since I never pencil in an outline before painting, I fought a lazy brain right from the start that did not want to map out the placement… which doesn’t make sense because I really really want to paint this one! These are not typically the colors I use either, so there are a few intimidating factors. I hope to maintain fresh, bright Easter colors — partly because this is when they bloom in Mexico. Painting is much like a runner hitting “the wall” but persevering and breaking through it…however in painting there are many walls to conquer.
Oxide Gallery
There are a few pieces hanging at Oxide Gallery, Denton, TX for the next three months: Rocky Mountain Vista, Zen Garden #6, and all four recent encaustic works.
Categories: acrylic painting, flowers, Mexico, Seasonal, Spring, The Majesty of Trees Collection, work in progress | 2 Comments »
2 Responses to “The Shavingbrush Tree”
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April 2nd, 2009 at 11:06
What an amazing plant! and good paintings too. Wish we could attend one of those dinners and see the art!
April 2nd, 2009 at 11:06
It truly is an amazing flower. From the bottom of the curled sepals to the tip of the bristles these flowers are about 7″ long!