GUARDIAN
I was awake late light night just thinking about painting. It occurs to me that I have spent a lot of time in the past year experimenting. I often didn't have time to paint for more than a few minutes here and there, so it seemed like the time to try one or two big pieces that I could easily stay focused on for a month or more, treating every individual area as though it was a singular painting itself. I've experimented with adding people, something fairly new for me despite the life drawing classes from so long ago, and in each piece I do with a person in it, I can see improvement. I began to get serious about the backgrounds, and I like the direction I'm going in there. And although I have and use just about every color in the Winsor Newton range and lots in the Daniel Smith line, when I'm working on a painting, I've begun to choose a selection of colors and pretty much stay within that semi limited range for the whole painting. I've put a lot of thought into what I want to paint, and why, and how I want to present the idea. And after all that, when I look at a recent painting I've done, I know that I've reached a new level. Sneaky things, levels - they don't arrive with a shout and a trumpet fanfare, they just sneak up on you and are suddenly there.
I've also renewed my focus - I paint animals and the country life I live, and I want to share the peaceful and the fun moments and my delight in beautiful things of all sorts.
Now that I think I know where I'm going next with my paintings, all I have to do is sit down and paint. :-)
