January 5, 2016 – The story of a painting – and a video!

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Over the weekend I finished a painting, I started two and a half years ago. The finished painting is so far from what I’d imagined and what the original photograph inspired, so I thought I’d share its progress with you. I had no conception of this as the finished painting, nor how much time it would take.

I took the original photograph in May of 2012, just after I’d left working at Light Rain and had re-joined my mom part time, to help promote her real estate business. I was out “on tour” with Mom and Gary, looking at houses for sale. I saw these sunlit roses in the backyard of a gorgeous house in Kent Woodlands. I had my iPhone handy and took this picture. It sat in my phone for a while and every time I saw it, it said, “paint me” or it said “paint me?” There was so much red and I’m just not a red person – but I loved the light!

In preparing for a trip to Kauai, I drew it on a full sheet of Arches 300lb cold pressed. I started it there, while on vacation in April of 2013. The background was nearly black in the photograph, so I just made up something with greens and a few spots of cobalt blue, because I just can’t help myself! Not sure if the background was done, – I can always go back – I moved on to the bud in the lower left, then the start of the flower. I remember sitting there on the covered front porch, working on these “hot” colors in the soft tropical breezes and it just didn’t feel right.

So, I picked up a plumeria painting I had started sometime earlier, and worked on it the rest of the vacation. I named this one “Melia,” Hawaiian for “plumeria” – which was just what I was in the mood to paint. I also had “Chocolat”- also in progress – with me on that trip and painting rich browns wasn’t working either! Time and place matters to my painting process.

So there it sat, among the paper collection in my studio, for a couple years. At the start of this year, I attempted to see why I wasn’t interested in finishing it, by doing a color composition. Those of you who’ve taken my two-day color class know what this is. It’s a way to abstract color from an image, to see how the combination of colors play with each other. It’s amazing how these compositions can be instructive. I find myself either loving them, or… not. I didn’t love this one. I didn’t even have enough in me to finish the composition! So there’s something not right in the color for me. Hmmm.

I thought about my painting “Awakening”, with the combination of pink, orange and yellow. This gave me the idea to play with the colors of the image in Photoshop – shifting away from so much red – to both pink and yellow-orange. Better!

Ok, so I started in with the bud at the top and some of the orange part of the left rose. This was in February, not quite a year ago.

Other paintings then crowded it out for my attention. I had Eternal (my clock painting) to paint and something for Open Studios… There it sat again until just after I finished the grapes called “Juicyfruit” this fall. Without a lot of energy in me, I thought it might be nice to get it done by the end of the year.

In late November, I got a call from someone who had seen “Lustina”, at the Marin County Fair this past summer. He wanted to buy it for his wife for Christmas! Holy cow! Pretty fun, except, she – “Lustina” – already has her home – she was on loan from Pam, for the show at the fair. I emailed him the image and current status of this one. He was interested, but said his wife liked all the green in Lustina, and he thought that there wouldn’t be enough green in this one to please her. I thought “Why not? Why don’t I do something else with this background?” I dove in with a big soft scrubber, and stripped away as much as I could of that dark background I’d painted in. The tricky and painstaking part, was all the edges along the tops of the roses. I really wanted to keep them clean and white, and not mess up all the parts I’d already painted!

I found another image with some sunlit rose leaves taken on our side yard, along with a few other images with good fuzzy backgrounds, and collaged them all together in Photoshop. I am so incredibly grateful to Steve Kimball and my time at Light Rain, to have given me the ability to work with images like I do. It’s become a major part of my creative process.

I projected this new collaged image in, to draw the leaves in the upper right. Painting then, was a problem. The previous background had stained the paper – there was no white. I had to use opaque paint to get the whites in. I used Acquacover, mixing it with yellow, yellow-green and turquoise to get the sense of light. I’d recently read about gouache and learned something. It’s not meant to be mixed with water like watercolor is. I had played around a bit with gouache in the past, and found it not all that different from watercolor – because I’d been mixing it with water! I painted it straight and this did the trick! I also learned that I’m such a sucker for the way watercolor paint, with the bright white of the paper shining through, it gives a sense of luminosity. I’m not switching to gouache anytime soon!

I also needed some opaque paint, to give the rest of the background some sense of light.

The new background in, I returned to the roses.

I heard from the guy who was interested in this for his wife, that he was instead, interested in a piece from someone else they saw at the fair last summer. It happened to be Karen, who painted with us for a while at the beginning of the year. I knew exactly the painting he was talking about – I’d watched her paint it! So, I put him them in touch with each other. Karen sold her first piece, they got a beautiful painting for Christmas and I didn’t have to then rush to get this one done in time. All is just as it should be. And without having had the discussions with him, I’d not have re-visited the background. I really was liking it – so much better!

Then Christmas came, and I was pulled away from my studio. I picked it back up on the last day of the year, and got it done by the end of the weekend.

It’s not my most inspired work. But I think it’s really ok. It is so far from where it started. And the transformation it took, wasn’t anything that I could have planned. It took the time it took – and the inputs from both inside me and the world outside me. It’s a confirmation that paintings do have lives of their own – and we as artists are really along for the ride.

Here’s a color composition I did just this morning, based on the new image. So much more pleasing to me!

And as we all start a new year, it leaves me with great expectancy, for the art that will come through me this year – and through all those I have the privilege to paint with every week. It’s fun to have no idea what that will be!

With my love and appreciation for your companionship on the journey –

Cara