Two artly things happening right now.... I have one month remaining until I hang my show at SIU's Morris Library. So I've started Dominions I and it has its own ferocious, wild energy, quite different to the others and very distinct unto itself. I'm going to resist photo'ing it for now although it is quite beautiful so far, and allow it to mature in secrecy until the time comes to reveal it. The other thing is that I have been following impulses to improve Powers I even after I'd announced it was finished. So I have been swinging back and forth between the canvases, sometimes in the same painting session!

In the past, I've written about unexpectedly going back into a painting I surmised was 'closed,' in order to bring it to life. This surprised me then and surprises me now. I haven't been entirely content with Powers I but again, it wasn't showing me any options and I wasn't sure if I was supposed to 'do' anything or leave it. I assumed it was closed. I've known artists who fiddle with paintings all the way up to a show and even after the painting has been exhibited or even published, they will add to it! In some ways this could be fiddling a painting to death and overthinking it. But in this case it really has been nagging me, the painting on the other side of my studio space staring at me like a Cat waiting to be fed dinner and they keep staring at you and you get no peace until you feed them. 

A painting is never finished. It simply stops in interesting places.

~ Paul Gardner

Suddenly what I was meant to do occurred to me: two things it wanted me to do, and then the two became three. I deepened the blue of the empyrean so it no longer looks raw and scratchy. The same with the pink Angel wings, I added dimension and texture to those. And some 'shadowing' to add depth around the little pairs of wings. I feel better about it now. Perhaps it is the gazes of the visitors to the Rotunda which will stabilize the painting at last into being.

The other day my little niece Mae was up in the studio and in the way of young people, was impelled to declare which of the Angels was at the moment her current favorite. She walked right up to Virtues I and announced, 'This one. This one is my favorite.' 'Really?' I replied, incredulous—because on a past occasion she observed of it 'This one is only details; the others all have something in the middle,' which crushed my confidence about the painting for quite a while. But that was before I put the tiny 'punch marks' of the Tiger claws into the space of the canvas. Maybe that is the choice that brought the painting through, animated it to life, made it loveable to Mae. 

Speaking of May.... Blessed Beltane, Happy May! I will meet you next in the New Moon Newsletter on May the 16th :)