After time off for a couple other projects, making my way back to Riverside Boys. Still two or three days from completion, the painting has come together in my mind’s eye, so I am painting furiously to articulate the vision before its clarity fades.
The painting is a story of my two dogs: Poppy (elderly golden retriever) and Shai (pharaoh hound puppy). In the painting Shai is about six months old, and really beginning to express himself as the bad-younger-brother. Poppy, to everyone’s surprise, has become the patient-and-loving-guardian. They are composed as a spooned-together-band-of-brothers nested among abstracted blocks of color. The colorful shapes suggest the architecture from which they are derived, but they don’t represent the architecture … not in the way a photograph is representational.
My goal here may sound peculiar. Many times over the years people have commented that my portraits “look so real”, even “like a photograph”. These comments are generally meant as compliments, and I am honored to accept them as such. But lately I’ve been feeling unusually connected to process, probably because of the students. And focusing on the process has caused me to fall in love all over again. I don’t just love creating portraits — I love PAINTING! I truly love smearing color on things. Thus the squished tubes of paint and the 90’s style paint drips and lettering (which happened spontaneously late the other night).
… In the home stretch and working on Poppy today. Saved the best for last.
