For 25 years I burned the candle at both ends. I always worked full time (mostly cooking in the restaurants of northern California) and worked on my art full time. Drawing/painting during the day before I had to go to work at night and then again on weekends. When I met this painter, Paul Husbands at a life drawing group, a man the age of my father, he mentioned to me how his art had suffered all his working life because he had been fated to being a week end (weakened) artist. Ouch. I felt sorry for this man. Now, for the last four years, working mostly days (cutting meat in a market), I have become myself a weakened artist! So very hard to build momentum and really get anything accomplished.
On another subject: this little foray back into a landscape, reminds me of the inherent difficulty of the figure painting that is my passion. The odd brush stroke that lands a little off target merely changes the shape of a natural object like a tree or clump of grasses. As these objects really take on any and every shape anyway it is of no real consequence. Take the same errant brush stroke in a figure painting and the subject becomes disfigured! So many times I have labored over a small patch of canvas containing the subjects face FOR DAYS. All the time working the paint to make it appear simple and effortless and not overworked. Such for me is the magic of a good figure. The appeal that lingers. The haunting attraction. Where as for the most part, landscapes are just nonoffensive. Perhaps color choices and contrast, over all composition are particularly pleasing, it is still for me, finally, decorative rather than engaging. Like wall paper or a house plant. A place saver. Where as a good figure painting strikes mysterious chords within the viewer. Feelings that require and then justify a second or longer viewing.
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