This painting was
posted a few years ago on my blog, but I recently had the thought of taking a better image of it with my new high pixel camera. The quality of the image is better, if you click on the picture you can see a blow-up. It is also interesting to write again about an old but good painting, one which I feel is a 'pivotal' painting, in other words, one that changed the way I painted or set me on a new course. I suppose what this work gave me was an added confidence, I did not know in advance if the massive amount of detail would end up looking any good. I'll let the viewers be the judge, but for me this is one of the most engrossing paintings I have, because of it's size I can not put in my portfolio, so it has been sitting in view on the laundry cupboard for years now, and I still can look at it and find things I had not seen before.
I am currently working on a painting that is tentatively called "Creative but Can't Escape" , it is based upon a linear grid on the background, and all of the elements of the landscape follow the grid pattern. The point I want to make with that one is that this doodleism method, which has really held my interest for the last 8 years and counting, had this inherent limitation. By constructing a work from pre-fabricated doodles, there is not really that much room to be that creative when I make the design.... but the contrary is to start with no pre-drawings, and then you get 'white page fright' which is never good. Anyways, I don't know yet if "Creative but Can't Escape" will be a pivotal painting or not, but I am trying in a way to
use the art to explore the art.
Lab Book #7; Construction at Site 22, 2004, ~50x30"
