Depth

1. (While it doesn't appear that I will actually be teaching landscape painting this summer since no one has signed up - I have been preparing my class notes for it today. So... ) I was thinking about Cezanne, who developed a way of creating atmospheric depth purely by color relationships rather than gradually fading the chiaroscuro and detail (which is visually how we perceive depth).

2. Also, I was part of a really good student's senior critique this week, and she had a bunch of abstract work with some representational elements mixed in. she was playing with formal elements creating some interesting spatial relationships.

3. And I recently read again, for class, Clement Greenberg's "Modernist Painting," which argues, modernly, that optical space, rather than illusionary space, is the only space appropriate for painting.

All of these converging ideas have lead me to think, purely for fun formal play, not philosophical reasons...

It would be fun to do landscapes with the flat patterning of Japanese art, also using Cezanne's color theory - so that a fun optical depth is created, though not an illusionary spacial depth. The result would probably be a cool patteren that played tricks on your eyes.

Painting

I know I've quit updating on my paintings - but I haven't quit painting. I just decided I didn't need to follow this dutch seven-layer technique. I don't really have the same pigments they used anyway. I am still glazing and layering - just reworking when I need to and only letting it dry until it feels dry. And yes, it's tedious. But it's also kind of new to me, so I'm enjoying figuring it out.

I have three pretty far along. I decided that I didn't like one that I started earlier, so I'm thinking of using that canvas for something else (it's the sideways one you see on the floor behind the easel). I also started a new one yesterday, and I'm feeling pretty good about it. And this is a pic of the original one I mentioned forever ago. The others I feel too nervous about to show as yet. I'm building up the colors and values, so the parts that really jump out at you (like parts of the tree), have been recently painted over and have to be built up again. Also, some of the colors will change. But anyway - here it is so far.