Spent a glorious Easter up in the studio, working mainly on this portrait of Josie, which was started way back last summer. I knew then I wanted to use gold leaf behind Venus … signifying divine light reaching down into the primordial blue and bringing forth life … beauty … love … as my version of the story goes. The gold paint is iridescent, and the effect is a marvelous glow around the subject. Also using iridescent blue in the water and to create the shadow boxes around the flowers. Don’t see any flowers? Not to worry … the pale yellow circles are placeholders. And then there’s the rose design on Josie’s jacket too. One of the things I’m pleased with is the linkage between heaven and earth … wanted to codify divine energy infusing matter with life … so I let liquid gold paint drip down, making its way deep into the water, like the fingers of God. It looks unstructured and kind of organic, but not wildly so.
