Green Apples: Final

Oh what consternation I felt this morning as I went back into this guy. Most of the paintings I did years ago were oils and with oils you can go back into it a day later and still work wet-on-wet. Not acylics. In fact I was getting very frustrated by the unquenshable thirst of this canvas the more I worked on it. I'd apply a stroke of paint and woosh it was sucked into the fabric as fast as can be. I have to say, as my values were getting screwed up since I had to constantly remix new piles of green goo, I was about to toss in the towel (the paint blotched paper towel, that is) and give up the brush, probably for at least another 15 years!

But I sat and listened to my cool jazz on the radio and remembered back to my Saturday sessions in Boston with Paoula back in '84. She'd be playing the same kinda public radio music in her loft studio. She told me to find that inner voice and go with it. I got what she meant, but it seemed no matter how hard I listened, I couldn't hear a thing.

Well today it spoke to me.

"I know you want your work to have that buttery-ease brush stroke look, like those by Carol Marine or Karin Jurick, but that will have to come with time," my inner voice calmly told me. "Rome wasn't built in a day and you aren't going to be able to paint like a multi-decade veteran until you get some practice under your belt."

Of course the voice is right. But it helps realizing this since I instead strove to finish the painting in the way I knew how.

So I'm not happy that it didn't turn out the way I envisioned but it does have some basic good points and overall, I think, is a rather decent composition (athough, what's with the shape of that bowl, LOL!).

I don't know what I think of the Cezanne-like "drawn in" dark borders around some of the apples and the inner lip of the bowl, but by this point, I wanted to just be over it. I feel like moving on to the next piece.

So here it is. It still needs it's final varnish but otherwise it's signed and done. Whew! One down, countless more to go!

"Green Apples"
Acrylic on canvas
10" x 8"