16" x 12"
2007
Oil on panel
This painting is addressing the same theme as Passing the Butterfly (Homage to Andrew Forge). The analogous palette is limited to green, yellow-green, yellow, white, black, and gray. I reached a point in painting it where I thought it was done. It looked good close-up, but at a distance it seemed illustrational and tight. Illustration can be Art with a capital “A”. The problem that keeps illustration from being fine art in many cases is that it is in service to getting a clear message across in a very concrete way. That being the goal, it is not often at liberty to pursue the mysterious and push metaphors to the limit. These things add complexity to art and offer the multiplicity of interpretation and rich symbolism that makes art vital and timeless.
So how did my painting get stuck being so literal? Sometimes I like to adhere to a likeness and I was being fairly loyal to the particular butterfly, the White Peacock. Maybe I was feeling cautious. I let it sit several weeks, like putting writing away in a drawer, and then felt ready to dig into it again. It required a bold mindset, as one might imagine Sargent feeling when he painted brushstrokes with bravura. He was never fussy. I made the three forms relate more to each other by bringing colors back and forth amongst them. I like the way the black separation (space) between the fingers of the upper hand visually blends into the body of the butterfly (form), like a crevice. It is a split in half that is echoed in the bottom hand through the yellow vertical line and the division in light and shadow. It isn’t obvious which hand is giving and which is taking. Often the act of giving fills oneself, as the cliché “It is better to give than to receive” extols.
