Evolution of a painting...

 

Back in October I was lucky enough to take a 2 day painting class
with the fabulous Flora Bowley. We got to work on 2 large
canvases, swapping back and forth between them, doing different
exercises on them and even rotating them every now and again to
see things differently. One of the exercises I had a hard time with
was when Flora made us swap one of our two paintings with

another person in the class. We then had that painting as ours and
had to decide how we would approach this new challenge. The
painting above is the painting I received from my swap partner.

Now don't forget we had been doing different painting exercises

on these just to get us to think differently so all of the paintings
were still in very early stages of the process. 

After working on this for quite a while, changing the paint colours,
rotating it etc this is where I got to. Just trying out different
things, still not sure what direction this painting was going in so
I knew a lot of this was not really how I wanted it. One of the
things Flora said to help people was to look at the painting,
rotate it, see what you liked and what you didn't like and take
it from there.

Well it was still looking like a mess to me so I decided to put down
some colour and block out parts I really did not like. This was
what it looked like by the time the class was over. I was not
worried, I knew I could work on it when I got home.

Well there were a few hiccups, the canvas was mailed to my home
as I had flown in to take the class, it arrived very badly damaged.
The frame was broken in about 5 places and the canvas was torn
a little. After about 6 weeks of phone calls, returning the painting
to Fed Ex, and getting claims forms filled in they finally paid my claim.
The canvas arrived back at my house even more damaged than

before, the side frame was in several pieces causing another hole
in the canvas :(

 

This weekend I had a lot of free time and spent most of it working
on the painting. I must admit that after all the troubles I just did
not feel like facing it.
It really doesn't look anything like I had envisioned when I finally
got it back. There are many, many layers of paint on here. After
painting most of Saturday I went to bed totally lost not knowing
if I would ever get the painting to where I wanted it. Well I went
back at it yesterday and did some finishing up today and right
now I am saying it is finished, yay!!