Another day of glazing, this time more tedious and lacking in drama. My lack of anger angered me! An artwork is many things, and I want it to be all. In a song, the melody hooks the listener but only the words can make one love a song, because the words mean something special, say something special. Instrumental music has its own challenges.
The colour study looked more dramatic due to better light/dark contrast. I'll try to address this.
After this, work on new paintings. I've made a couple of small changes to the Theresienstadt composition, adding more emotion to the eyes; that central face will reflect how the view feels. I also added a second 'box' of light, the windows, the façade, this time overlapping the death pile of corpses. This adds an element of eternal cycle and movement to everything; this is no longer a story or message, but an observation.
Descartes will take one more day. I've changed the title. It was (when conceived in 2009) Time Independent Portrait Of Rene Descartes Suddenly Realising That Every Thought Stems From A Prior Thought Or Memory Experience. The title stated that the painting was firmly about determinism, but the painting represents, most clearly, a moment of epiphany after (or during) an internal dialectic. There are no particular references to determinism, the title was there to make a statement of my epiphany on the matter; it was an artwork in itself. As it stands that title would harm the painting for two reasons. Firstly, it is 'wrong', in that the image can't represent (at least, not only that) what the title states. And secondly, it's so cerebral and complete that it harms it as an artwork, it tells too much.
The new title (so far) is Time Independent Portrait Of Rene Descartes Thinking. The sense of self that Descartes was so concerned about arises from an internal dialectic (ironically, two selves). My current thoughts about the painting are that it shows this - but the image hasn't changed since 2009, so expressing that wouldn't help. What is it about? Who can say. The title should be as clear as it can, but can't be explicit.
