Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Two Paintings: Green with Yellow Marks, and Ochre and Brown






Ochre and Brown, 12” x 24”, oil on panel, 2007
Green With Yellow Marks, 12” x 24”, oil on panel, 2007


Ochre and Brown is a strange painting for me because it is both subtle and straightforward. It is earthy and feels like a golden, burnt field of Millet and has the brown of a discolored varnished oil from the nineteenth century. The land and sky have an interesting relationship as pieces of ground seem to lose their density and become clouds. It is strange too for its mixture of modernity and history, organic and synthetic.
Green With Yellow Marks reminds me of a field of buttercups or yellow tulips. I’m not a gardener and I welcome and enjoy the site of dandelions covering my lawn in the spring. The stretched horizontal landscape format works well for this pastoral imagery; the yellow marks twinkle like stars.