" Passage"
I decided to explore this particular spatial arrangement for a while, to see what I could do within its constraints. I'm finding it very freeing, actually. I have a sense of seeking when I am painting them. I know my mind is deriving the forms from my environment, but they are going through some interesting permutations before they emerge into my awareness. Sometimes that doesn't even happen until the paint lets me know what it wants to do. It's not entirely unconscious: more like going with the flow.
At some point during the last several months, I began recognizing that a certain feeling of frustration begins to set in just as I am about to make a major shift, and increases the longer I work at it. For a long time, I thought that feeling of frustration was because I did not have the slightest idea what I was doing. Which in a way is true, but is actually beside the point. I finally realized that the frustration is both inevitable and necessary. It means I am going in the right direction and am seeking the path: I just don't see it yet. I have learned to look forward to that feeling: it is exhilarating if I stand back and let it happen.
I have three more of this configuration in various stages of completion: looks like a series of something. Maybe I'll call it the "Seeking" series.
The watercolor came about because a painter friend of mine mentioned that she has been working in watercolors after working in soft pastels for a while. Last night, needing to leave off the oils, I wondered if I could do one of these in watercolor. There it is.
Time to take the bread out of the oven and put another log in the heating stove.
