Here is painting 3. I thought I had photos of the process leading to it, but I can't find them on the camera. This one also started as the combination of three photos, one of which I recall was a view of a man made lake in Oklahoma, with several thin trees in the foreground. Those trees are still visible in some of the yellow verticals in this piece. Another photo was of a farm - and the buildings remain from that one. When this was coming into focus, which it did as I was painting it, I realized it was a storm - maybe even a tornado - approaching the peace of the farmstead.
And in these next two photos (click to see them better) you can see the line drawings that start painting 4. The first is just one set of lines from one photo. The second shows how I flipped the paper over and sketched some of the contours of the rocks over the top of the other.
It's this collection of lines that I sit and daydream over, turning it around and around, looking until some lines either suggest something, or erasing lines if they irritate me. Eventually the image at the end of this post emerged - a longer than usual stretch from the line drawings, in this case, so it took me some time to match them up and be certain that these photos and line drawings led to this painting.
>>>> Appendix de Grenouille <<<<
If you have visited us often, perhaps you know that I am not a tree grenouille. So what am I doing in a tree? Voila, I am illustrating a point.If you hire handlers for your image, and polls show you are not looking good enough, and then you hire other handlers and they ask you to look yet another way, and then the situation changes and, voila, a new image, and a new message, and maybe yet a third set of handlers, you might be so confused by the end that you, like moi, end up sitting up in a tree. And we are suggesting that perhaps this is not a dignified thing, and perhaps dignity and integrity are important for a President?
One candidate has had one look and one message throughout the primaries and campaign - "Change, Hope, Unity - together we can do this." The words and focus sharper now than at the start, but message and image the same. Meanwhile the other has changed the image and message over and over: Maverick, no, Experience, no, Stay the Course, no, Change, no, Suspend Campaign and help fix the $ crisis, no, get out of the way, no...
And in these final weeks he is standing by, "We don't really know who the other guy is." Etienne has a Latin phrase from his philosophy classes in college that applies - "Tu Quoque." "You too." Etienne says it's the cry in debate when the opponent has actually proved the point they were trying to stick on you. We don't really know who THIS guy is. He is whomever his handlers tell him to be. Do we want a president in a tree?
5 comments:
Both paintings look like reflections. I see the wall of the storm in the first one. You know, we had a tornado pass through here in March and from our vantage point, it really was like a wall.
M. Grenouille is a very smart frog. Politically and otherwise.
DCup - M. Grenouille is tired of McCain, and even more tired of Palin. He would like to see them recede into the political background and stay there.
Steve, this is interesting to see how your drawings turn into a painting for me. I could see the architecture even though you were drawing nature. Loved it and your painting too ;)
as always, the little froggie is right!
Linda - Thank you, and I hoped you might enjoy the process I use to come up with compositions.
DCup - I forgot to mention that both paintings do have large areas of reflection. I found it interesting to watch my inner artist refuse to repeat the red sun, though, and to deliberately not repeat all the architectural elements in the buildings - or at least not in the correct order or positions.
I think a man should be able to handle himself and send the would be "handlers" scrambling up trees when they see him coming .... poor froggie - come on down out of that tree if you're not a tree froggie ...
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