Friday, November 7, 2014

In Search of The Story

There are painters who will paint almost any topic as a demonstration of their ability to make a common element magical through watercolor technique. I certainly am not one of them. I need to get into the spirit of the topic in order to stimulate my painting effort. the last series, The Prima Kitchen, was actually a story on the chefs, line cooks and cooking process behind the scenes and was very successful. Unfortunately as i was low on funds and rushed to complete the exhibit i did not retain any quality images of the work and that was a mistake due to its reception by many folks. that won't happen again.

Once more i am on the search for a topic. I have spent many days going over old studies, photographs, slides etc. in search of a story. i am getting close, going back to my roots as an urban design consultant in small towns in the Pacific Northwest, BC and Canada. and now instead of just painting isolated images, i am threading together resource images of abandoned industrial buildings, mountain views from the Alaskan ferry and even groups of people in various clustered compositions on the ferry or in certain small towns. since i am not good at faces, the clusters and composition of the group become the strengths of the painting, not the facial features--one thing i struggled with and learned from the last "Prima Kitchen" series and exhibit.

Bottom line: what is the story? what is the spirit within the images that connects them? ahhhh. liking that.

Keep painting and i will check in in about two weeks as i get into composition and value studies.

Ron K