Mid Process

At this point the drill becomes a welcomed discipline. Start thin to thick, work dark to light, mass to detail. These things are expected and come with their level of frustration and forgiveness. But now in Mid-process I wonder if I have enough time. Reason being is because of my "Romanticism" objective I am not sure it will be as polished as I would like it.

I know I have an issue with use of colour, and for this I will have to henceforth buckle down in future projects and really make many notes until it becomes second nature. But I have fears of mixing one colour at the start of a piece and then having to cover it with a completely new colour at the end. This obstacle comes really with rich, dark colours. Where on mixing them on palette and adding them to canvas, when it eventually dries it does not correspond to what I have. Especially as my "style" borders on the subtle changes, I fear that I would undo any such work with a wrong colour.

But I guess this process will have to yield to the expectation of colour errors and having to go back and fix said problems is now just a part of my process.

My own expectations will always be higher than what I get, mostly because I believe that through stretching myself I get allot more of my potential than I would normally.

Making Sense of it All

Romanticism is style I expect I will continue to study as I progress in painting portraits. Because there is a strong sense of movement and emotion in the period as well as the artists exaggeration through certain visual elements; I believe that it can give one me a style that also has a strong attention to detail, inclusion of nature and freedom of adding stylistic details that I naturally am drawn to.

My limitations in this piece will be of course the visual facts of the period, where my portrait cannot include the fashion of the time (furniture, and attire). I am encouraged by this because as it will give my piece its own identity, while allowing me to study the style of painting.

Vermeer's work allows me to work on lighting effects a little more than my last piece. Using Vermeer and Romanticism I will attempt a natural lighting source that works with the motion and subtly of Romanticism, but will probably include a window like a typical Vermeer piece.

I have already worked a few photos of my wife to work from, but I already feel that I may have to revise her pose.

Johannes Vermeer

Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer (Dutch pronunciation: [joˈhɑnəs jɑn ʋərˈmeːr]; baptized in Delft on 31 October 1632 as Joannis, and buried in the same city under the name Jan on 15 December 1675) was aDutch painter who specialized in exquisite, domestic interior scenes of middle class life. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime. He seems never to have been particularly wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death, perhaps because he produced relatively few paintings.^[3]

Vermeer worked slowly and with great care, using bright colours and sometimes expensive pigments, with a preference for cornflower blue and yellow. He is particularly renowned for his masterly treatment and use of light in his work.^[4]

Vermeer painted mostly domestic interior scenes. As Koning points out: "Almost all his paintings are apparently set in two smallish rooms in his house in Delft; they show the same furniture and decorations in various arrangements and they often portray the same people, mostly women".^[5]

Recognized during his lifetime in Delft and The Hague, his modest celebrity gave way to obscurity after his death; he was barely mentioned in Arnold Houbraken's major source book on 17th century Dutch painting (Grand Theatre of Dutch Painters and Women Artists), and was thus omitted from subsequent surveys of Dutch art for nearly two centuries.^[6][7] In the 19th century Vermeer was rediscovered by Gustav Friedrich Waagen and Théophile Thoré-Bürger, who published an essay attributing sixty-six pictures to him, although only thirty-four paintings are universally attributed to him today.^[2] Since that time Vermeer's reputation has grown, and he is now acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age.

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

Self Portrait - Age 24, 1804

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ ogyst dɔminik ɛ̃ɡʁ]; 29 August 1780 – 14 January 1867) was a French Neoclassical painter. Although he considered himself to be a painter of history in the tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David, by the end of his life it was Ingres'sportraits, both painted and drawn, that were recognized as his greatest legacy.

A man profoundly respectful of the past, he assumed the role of a guardian of academic orthodoxy against the ascendant Romantic style represented by his nemesis Eugène Delacroix. His exemplars, he once explained, were "the great masters which flourished in that century of glorious memory when Raphael set the eternal and incontestable bounds of the sublime in art ... I am thus a conservator of good doctrine, and not an innovator."^[1] Nevertheless, modern opinion has tended to regard Ingres and the other Neoclassicists of his era as embodying the Romantic spirit of his time,^[2] while his expressive distortions of form and space make him an important precursor of modern art.

Romanticism and Portraits: Ingres

Portrait of Baron Joseph Vialetes de Mortarieu

by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

1806 , French, oil on canvas

..welcome to the world of romanticism: where feelings and emotions are more highly prized than logic and reason. romanticism stemmed from what some felt to be a too extreme obsession with logic and reason (prior to this period many significant scientific discoveries spurred the public to prioritize science above all other subjects). prompted by the writings of such thinkers as rousseau, artists began to put more of their personal feelings into their works. the results were sometimes dramatic compositions that forced reactions from the viewer or morepeaceful arrangements that inspired self-introspection.

...so what's so romantic about this portrait then? well, despite ingrés' oft-quoted stance against the less classically based style of romantic art, his works often contained elements of that very movement. in this portrait of a young mayor recently elected for office in his hometown, ingrés infused the figure with a dashing, debonair air by painting the figure in stylish modern dress and creating a gentle wind to tousle his hair. softly blended colors and edges lit by a gentle light source all draw focus to the youth of the subject. the bright medals standing out clearly against the plain black dress coat add a final masculine touch to the already romanticized portrait of an accomplished young man. ingrés protested that his work was more in the classical tradition (which is true if one considers the fine brushstrokes and ideal forms of figures in his works) but paintings such as this one of baron joseph show that the artist was clearly influenced by many other movements in art.

Source:

Norton Simon

Redbeansoup.com

http://www.redbeansoup.net/nortonsimon/roman.html

Romanticism Defined

Romanticism, first defined as an aesthetic in literary criticism around 1800, gained momentum as an artistic movement in France and Britain in the early decades of the nineteenth century and flourished until mid-century. With its emphasis on the imagination and emotion, Romanticism emerged as a response to the disillusionment with the Enlightenment values of reason and order in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789. Though often posited in opposition to Neoclassicism, early Romanticism was shaped largely by artists trained in Jacques-Louis David'sstudio, including Baron Antoine-Jean Gros, Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson, and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. This blurring of stylistic boundaries is best expressed in Ingres' Apotheosis of Homer and Eugène Delacroix's Death of Sardanapalus (both Museé du Louvre, Paris), which polarized the public at the Salon of 1827 in Paris. While Ingres' work seemingly embodied the ordered classicism of the David in contrast to the disorder and tumult of the Delacroix, in fact both works draw from the Davidian tradition but each ultimately subverts that model, asserting the originality of the artist—a central notion of Romanticism.

In Romantic art, nature—with its uncontrollable power, unpredictability, and potential for cataclysmic extremes—offered an alternative to the ordered world of Enlightenment thought. The violent and terrifying images of nature conjured by Romantic artists recall the eighteenth-century aesthetic of the Sublime. As articulated by the British statesman Edmund Burke in a 1757 treatise and echoed by the French philosopher Denis Diderot a decade later, "all that stuns the soul, all that imprints a feeling of terror, leads to the sublime." In French and British painting of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the recurrence of images of shipwrecks (2003.42.56) and other representations of man's struggle against the awesome power of nature manifest this sensibility. Scenes of shipwrecks culminated in 1819 with Théodore Gericault's strikingly original Raft of the Medusa (Louvre), based on a contemporary event. In its horrifying explicitness, emotional intensity, and conspicuous lack of a hero, The Raft of the Medusa became an icon of the emerging Romantic style. Similarly, J. M. W. Turner's 1812 depiction of Hannibal and his army crossing the Alps (Tate Britain, London), in which the general and his troops are dwarfed by the overwhelming scale of the landscape and engulfed in the swirling vortex of snow, embodies the Romantic sensibility in landscape painting. Gericault also explored the Romantic landscape in a series of views representing different times of day; in Evening: Landscape with an Aqueduct (1989.183), the dramatic sky, blasted tree, and classical ruins evoke a sense of melancholic reverie. 

Another facet of the Romantic attitude toward nature emerges in the landscapes of John Constable, whose art expresses his response to his native English countryside. For his major paintings, Constable executed full-scale sketches, as in a view of Salisbury Cathedral (50.145.8); he wrote that a sketch represents "nothing but one state of mind—that which you were in at the time." When his landscapes were exhibited in Paris at the Salon of 1824, critics and artists embraced his art as "nature itself." Constable's subjective, highly personal view of nature accords with the individuality that is a central tenet of Romanticism. 

This interest in the individual and subjective—at odds with eighteenth-century rationalism—is mirrored in the Romantic approach to portraiture. Traditionally, records of individual likeness, portraits became vehicles for expressing a range of psychological and emotional states in the hands of Romantic painters. Gericault probed the extremes of mental illness in his portraits of psychiatric patients, as well as the darker side of childhood in his unconventional portrayals of children. In his portrait of Alfred Dedreux (41.17), a young boy of about five or six, the child appears intensely serious, more adult than childlike, while the dark clouds in the background convey an unsettling, ominous quality. 

Such explorations of emotional states extended into the animal kingdom, marking the Romantic fascination with animals as both forces of nature and metaphors for human behavior. This curiosity is manifest in the sketches of wild animals done in the menageries of Paris and London in the 1820s by artists such as Delacroix, Antoine-Louis Barye, and Edwin Landseer. Gericault depicted horses of all breeds—from workhorses to racehorses—in his work. Lord Byron's 1819 tale of Mazeppa tied to a wild horse captivated Romantic artists from Delacroix to Théodore Chassériau, who exploited the violence and passion inherent in the story. Similarly, Horace Vernet, who exhibited two scenes from Mazeppa in the Salon of 1827 (both Musée Calvet, Avignon), also painted the riderless horse race that marked the end of the Roman Carnival, which he witnessed during his 1820 visit to Rome. His oil sketch (87.15.47) captures the frenetic energy of the spectacle, just before the start of the race. Images of wild, unbridled animals evoked primal states that stirred the Romantic imagination. 

Along with plumbing emotional and behavioral extremes, Romantic artists expanded the repertoire of subject matter, rejecting the didacticism of Neoclassical history painting in favor of imaginary and exotic subjects. Orientalism and the worlds of literature stimulated new dialogues with the past as well as the present. Ingres' sinuous odalisques (38.65) reflect the contemporary fascination with the exoticism of the harem, albeit a purely imagined Orient, as he never traveled beyond Italy. In 1832, Delacroix journeyed to Morocco, and his trip to North Africa prompted other artists to follow. In 1846, Chassériau documented his visit to Algeria in notebooks filled with watercolors and drawings, which later served as models for paintings done in his Paris studio (64.188). Literature offered an alternative form of escapism. The novels of Sir Walter Scott, the poetry of Lord Byron, and the drama of Shakespeare transported art to other worlds and eras. Medieval England is the setting of Delacroix's tumultuousAbduction of Rebecca (03.30), which illustrates an episode from Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. 

In its stylistic diversity and range of subjects, Romanticism defies simple categorization. As the poet and critic Charles Baudelaire wrote in 1846, "Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor in exact truth, but in a way of feeling."

Source:

Kathryn Calley Galitz

Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Metropolitan Museum Of Art

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/roma/hd_roma.htm

Final Project: Another Portrait?

It is not that I mind that I have to do another portrait, but wonder minimally what else I may have come up with.

My wife wants me to do a portrait of her. Creatively it gives me a heading to steer in the perimeters of the project, so no complaints. It will be a learning venture and I will always look at it this way.  Content and symbolism will still be achieved in the piece once I get my homework done.

My Influences and research:
I am influenced by Romanticism, especially the work of Ingres who I researched before. It is not the technical part of his work but rather the classic style that I feel is important of me to learn before I break out into my own. Of course my expectations of reaching that level of portrait is far from attainable due to my own skill and time frame.
Thanks to work in my last piece I am also encouraged to push my understanding of lighting effects. I have always been interested in the effects of Vermeer's work and hope to attain some level of skill with this. His use of lighting is popularly celebrated so I think it is a good place to start.
Somewhere between my ongoing technical growth and research in these two artists I hope to bring about an artwork that I my wife can like and I would be proud to place in her office or our home:)
I am not putting too much pressure on myself, if id does not come out great I can always do it again.

Her Influences:
I already have to include her personality into the piece. Knowing she also has a strong liking of Romanticism, but she would rather impressionism:)
Her homeland will be reflected in the piece but as in my last portrait I aim first with colours. Her hometown of Mostar, Herzegovina stands in my mind with allot of grey mountains, Lavender fields in the summer and rosemary bushes that grow wild everywhere. The teal blue of the Adriatic sea and the Neretva river are also important, but the I will contemplate with as I would not describe the region as colourful (coming from the Caribbean). Artists she is drawn to are Delacroix, Corot and Boudin.

Though I will reflect on her preferences because her portrait should reflect her personality; me as the artist must remember it is also how I see her and would like to illustrate that to the the viewer. But I hope to capture this in, posture, dress and gaze.

My size will be square (already part of my reflection of her personality), so most probably 36"x 36".

All left to do is a initial sketch to figure out layout and composition. The problem here I feel will be what to include as Ingres and Vermeer had allot in their pieces and I doubt I will have as much time. With that worked out I will venture into a photograph to work from and begin.

As Ingres portraits stood as period pieces with style of dress and furniture and indications I also hope to incorporate these. Vermeer was known for doing middle to lower classes doing everyday things so I will steer my creative exploration this way also.

Portrait 2:Completion

I had far too much fun with this piece while in mid process. Affected by the Trinidadian music in my drive; I had to switch to my everyday musical style to complete it.

My satisfaction with the technical work as it pertained to the human anatomy slowed my completion also. Every time I mixed blue paint it seemed to be different and I had to re touch the entire piece, but was encouraged with how the piece looked. 

The lighting effect was very clear in my head but I struggled to let it make sense.

Though I was very happy with the outcome and what people's impressions were of the piece in critique, part of me will always hope that I did more in detail. 

One good thing that came out of my enjoyment was a stretch in the background in learning a bit of what I see as impressionism, stumbling on a style that worked with longer brush strokes and heavier thicker paint.

Unfortunately I doubt it will be a style I will use in my next piece, but will further in future pieces.

Portrait 2: Concept to Canvas

The risk of this idea is a little troubling, fighting full figure, full colour and full canvas is allot when I think I was scared of doing objects in black and white just two months ago.

None the less I am applying passion and logic as I always do with the hope to learn. The Decision of the pose and content took me the longest, actually researching thing and getting a few sketches down went a little easier than anticipated. Also music to fuel the fire took allot of searching and begging.

After making a few successful sketches my confidence grew, which were welcomed because after many steps to create a canvas I would hate to paint something I did not like, evidently I am more heavily invested in this project than I am usedto.

I fairly pleased with my start, but on review of what I have on canvas with past images; I feel I have made a structural error with the leg being a little too thick. I will have to figure out if it is acceptable to the piece or not.

When I was a young boy I was afraid ...

"When I was a Young boy I was a afraid.." Peter Minshall, Carnival Mas designer.

Minshall's quote probably best expresses what most children first feel when they see a Jab Molassie. As a child I hated Carnival, too many people too loud to many smells. Baby oil and Cocoa, paint, glue and feathers, horse dung and burning asphalt prompted me to cover my nose. I hated to go into Port-of-Spain, but my parents insisted though neither of them would prove to be true Carnival fanatics; I am thankful for their effort and my exposure.

The Jab Molassie group or "Band" would come "chipping" down the street for spectators to see, they were covered in either paint, mud or Cocoa mixed with oil. With horns on their head, a devils tail and a pitch fork to "jab" you; they would chant "Pay the devil, Pay the Devil" in unison to the rhythm as the beat tins, drums and bottles. They would use food colouring or "Kool-Aid" to make their tongues bleed enhancing the grotesque masquerade. 

The idea was simple, give them coins or notes and they would leave you alone. Leave you clean. They typically terrorised children, but parents culturally would create fear in their children's mind long before the arrive. 

This rite of passage is our baptism into the Carnival.

Years later having survived the mental trauma; hormones birthed an interest into the Carnival Masqerade or Mas. Opening oneself half naked in the hot sun in the middle of the capital city draws in a spiritual experience that all virgin masqueraders experience. The freedom is simply therapeutic. My "Monkey Gland raise" or the wild energy picked me out of all others around me and slowly the Jab Molassie surfaced. 

I lived for Carnival and lived the carnival as a Jab Molassie. Honest and unafraid the "Wildness" in me was always welcomed socially. A fire-starter an Ice breaker, me and others like me brought the energy like a drug to make the party people forget, shrug off inhibition and be themselves if only for a while.

Now I must hide my energy in places far too polite to understand the beauty in uninhibited energy. Where persons rather appear polite than be honest. I have grown accustomed to the facade, but the Jab Molassie still remains ... or is it leaving me. A gift for someone far more deserving of its powers...

Jab Molassie

Jab is the French patois for 'Diable' (Devil), and Molassie is the French patois for Mélasse (Molasses). The Jab Molassie is one of several varieties of devil mas played in Trinidad and Tobago carnival. The costume consists of short pants or pants cut off at the knee, and a mask and horns. The jab malassie would carry chains, and wear locks and keys around his waist, and carry a pitch fork. He may smear his body with grease, tar, mud or coloured dyes (red, green or blue). The jab molassie "wines" or gyrates to a rhythmic beat that is played on tins or pans by his imps. While some of his imps supply the music, others hold his chain, seemingly restraining him as he pulls against them in his wild dance.


The differences among the various forms of devil mas were once distinct, but have become blurred over time.

Carnival ....

In 1498, Christopher Columbus landed in Trinidad and as was the practice in the so called age of Discovery and Exploration, took possession of the island in the name of the King and Queen of Spain. The island did not have the promise of immense wealth like the other countries in Spain’s Western empire. Trinidad was, therefore, largely ignored for over two hundred and fifty years.

In 1776, out of concern for this state of affairs, the Spanish king issued a Cedula of Population, which opened the island to colonization by the French. A second Cedula followed in 1783. This saw an even larger influx of planters from the French West Indian islands of Martinique, Guadeloupe and Saint Dominigue. Arriving also were Free Coloreds and Africans. The French brought with them their cultural traditions, language, dress, food and customs.

In 1797, Trinidad was captured by the British and was made a crown colony of Great Britain. The British immediately began the process of colonization as they had in Barbados and Jamaica two centuries before.

In this era, the period between Christmas and Lent was marked by great merrymaking and feasting by both the French and English. Historians of the nineteenth century wrote about the balls, fetes champetres and house to house visiting engaged in by the white upper class. It was also the custom of the British to impose martial law during the Christmas season. Military exercises were performed at the start of this martial law.

The Carnival celebrations between 1783 and 1838 were dominated by the white elite. Africans and coloreds (persons of mixed race) were forbidden by law to participate in street festivities. This is not to say that they did not celebrate in their own way in their compounds.

During this period also, there were numerous balls, parties and other entertainment. This gave the Africans some measure of freedom to enjoy themselves and engage in merry making. These festivities, along with the pomp and ceremony involved in imposing martial law, provided the Africans with ideas for some of the earliest masquerades for carnival.

The pre-emancipation carnival saw whites costume themselves as ‘negre jardin’ (field Negroes) and mulatresses. They also reenacted the Cannes Brulees (French for Burning Canes): the practice of rounding up slaves to put out fires in the cane field.

With the emancipation of the slaves in 1838 however, the door was opened for the full participation of the Africans in the Carnival.

Blue ?

Boscoe Holder

The evolution of my ideas has forced me to return home...

Boscoe Holder is the first artist that I ever made me dream. In my teenage years I visited Trinidad's Port-Of-Spain small Museum just to look at his paintings weekly. He worked primarily on the female form, and in darker women skin tones, contrasting with natural Caribbean colours. 

I feel with Boscoe Holder I can have a good start, as I believe he saw beauty and Trinidad in unconventional places as I do. He never strayed too far into the abstract but would rather experiment with different techniques. 

After revisiting his work , I now realise that travel and time away from home have made me stray away from my natural flow. This is the premise of my next piece.

Biography ...

Boscoe Holder was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad in the early 1920s. He died on 21.4.2007 at his residence in Newtown, Port of Spain.

He already painted when he was five years old and was an accomplished pianist at a very early age as well, playing for the wealthy French Creole, Chinese and Portuguese at their functions by the time he was 9 years old. In his late teens he formed his own dance company. In his dance he used traditional Afro-Caribbean interpretations: shango, bongo and bélé. He frequently used his dancers as models for his paintings. In 1950 Boscoe Holder moved to London,England where he danced and performed on the piano at all the well-known theatres and clubs. By that time he was married to Sheila Clarke who was his lead dancer in his own dance company and also became his favourite model for his painting. He has staged many one man exhibitions in Trinidad and exhibited also in New York, Helsinki, Stockholm, Ostende and England. At the end of the 1960s he returned to his native land where he established himself soon as one of the top painters, not only in Trinidad and Tobago, but throughout the Caribbean. Boscoe Holder has exhibited frequently in most of the Caribbean islands and his paintings can be found in many collections around the world.

Portrait 2: Research

This new project has occupied more than half of the used pages in my journal, but despite all the sketches and scratches I only feel like I now have something able to develop.
None the less this blog addresses my research, both technical and content related.

(1) Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres:
Looking at furthering portrait style and technical know how I reviewed and read "Portraits by Ingres".His style was impeccable, his subject matter a little questionable by me. But his self portrait "Young man with Earring" spoke to me as seemed to convey an openness and vulnerability of the artist through the pose, gaze and colours.

(2) The Portrait Now:
I managed to find the text where Elaine got so many of her examples and was able to look through all the artists and their work in depth. To rename each and why would be redundant so here is who stuck out to me.
Technically speaking the "Kate Moss" by Chuck Close caught my eye for its detail, especially as it worked for his usual large scale. But Eric Fisch's technique drew me in as he mixes a contrast of brush strokes from a smooth background to rough skin tone. I see the use of this in a piece but not sure I would try it in this project.

(3) Painting People: Figure Painting Today
The text was the simplest I could find in a sea of human anatomy books at Clemens. What I needed was a text that I could always refer to when doing my initial sketches.

(4) The artist guide to facial expressions:
This text had allot to offer, but far too much to study in one sitting. Especially as my last piece was fairly expressionless. Now having arrived at a piece that will include not one but two facial expressions, I fell I can now go back and consult the technical explanations of the facial gestures.

How to Build a Canvas

(1) Cut wood (45 degree Angles), drill holes at corners for screws.
(2) Score inside of angles for glue to grip.
(3) Add wood Glue.
(4) Add angles and clamps to corners at Top Edge Corners.
(5) Wait 1 Hour for glue to dry.
(6) Drill in Screws (Make sure drill is set to forward).
(7) Sand inside of Frame.
(8) Cut Canvas, size of frame plus 4" on each side.
(9) Staples (move top middle>Bottom middle> left Middle> Right Middle)
(10) Staples Pull tight with each staple, two inches between staples, leave two
        inches at the corners.
(11) Pull Corners to triangle and fold to staple (like gift wrapping).
(12) Prime Canvas with Gesso, mix Half gesso and half water.
(13) Apply to canvas in a circular motion,
        the smooth with brush (30 Mins to dry)
(14) Sandpaper surface
(15) 2nd Coat Gesso, undiluted, smooth (30 mins to dry)
(16) 3rd Coat Gesso, not too much Gesso, smooth.

Portrait 2: Brainstorming

For our next project I have come across many ideas and as I have been trained, worked through thoughts to develop one, stick to it and then go with all guns.

I believe I am missing the Point.

This is an art class, I am not here to make great works of art. Because lord knows I am far from doing anything of the sort. What I am here to do is learn. My main complaint was to get away from the vanity of doing another self portrait and looking at myself for another few weeks. But now I see that I will make mistakes, and there is no better mug to cut your teeth on than your own.

I have four main ideas:
(1) Sofija (shot of myself from behind holding my daughter).
(2) Hole (Shot of myself in a hole looking up)
(3) Vitruvian Man (personalisation and updating of Da Vinci's famous sketch)
(4) Comic book hero (personalisation of comic book art in oil)

I decided on number four (4) after spending the past three days sick and looking at Wolverine and the Xmen episodes on Netflix.

Elaine gave me one question: "Russel would you be able to attain the level of realism and detail that you would want?"

After an afternoon thinking about it I realise that she is right. As I self professed before "simpler is better", I would probably say more without going into so much literal detail. I will leave that type of process for when I am a self accomplished painter.

Given all the evidence of my technical work needing work, my painting development and my current emotional state; I believe that if I start simple and work in other elements through style and colour I will be able to create a piece that will forward my skill and be ripe with content.

Back to the drawing board, mind the pun ....