20" x 16"
16" x 20"
oil on panel
The obsession continues...here are two more from memory. Whistler always fascinates me for his sense of scale. Take the way he paints the figure in Nocturne in Gold: Old Battersea Bridge (click here for a close-up). It is not how you think a person might be painted, but in this context it completely works. That is how a lot of abstraction is; it seems wrong at first, but when well done, it can be right on the nose.
I decided to zoom out in number seven. I had tried doing it in number four, but I couldn't let go of the huge blossoms yet. I think I must have painted this little bouquet about fifty times over before arriving at the way it looks now, almost singular like one flower. It looks figurative to me, like a parachuting person. Someone thought it looked like flowers on an altar, with that gray rectangle behind it.
Number eight is very fluid, rhythmically winding the eye through the bouquet, stopping to note the particular change in light/color of each rose. Of course it is its own thing. Might remind you of Cy Twombly, mid-career Guston, or Terry Winters.
What next? Stay tuned...
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