Last night, a nightmare. I was gifted two brass figures of monk-like jews in cloaks, one had a wavy beard as a father, one without as a son, I initially confused the two until I saw the beard. I put them on the mantelpiece then noticed a caterpillar, striped like a yellowjacket wasp, inject one with an ovipositor, ultimately to kill the figure with a parasite. I covered the insect with a sheet of paper to trap it. The insect changed into a wasp, then a beetle, growing, and becoming stronger as I tried to trap it by folding the edges of the paper. It tried to escape but I managed to trap it by rapidly folding and crimping the paper edges. It was a large beetle, still visible through the paper, still yellow and black striped. I showed it to someone present but it burst through the paper, now a huge hornet, 25 or 50cm long. I dropped the paper and tried to step on it. It transformed into a giant millipede, still growing, and managed to crush it though it was a 30cm long and very fat. It lay broken into skeletal parts. I said that I wouldn't be surprised if it came back to life.
I awoke to a day of painting in the 24 degree heat.
First, glazing 'Sisyphus Rolling A Coconut Dangerously Towards The Critical Mass Of Pat Benatar':
Work was slow but the results were very good. Then glazing another layer on the H Beam Piper painting. The storm part in particular needed some smoothing, and there was slight damage to the top right corner due to trying to glaze last time while the surface was semi-dry. Both things were easily done and to good effect.
I was reminded of several things. First, that Dali wrote something about the coefficients of viscosity never being the same twice when painting. So true. Some hair strokes of Pat Benatar were hard and laboured, some dreamlike and perfect. The same was true of the fine details of the storm near the black hole of H Beam Piper. I was then reminded of Dali's mention of Venetian Turpentine (a resin) for these upper layers. I've not tried this. Resins seem to offer a good solution to fat over lean while increasing fluidity. My next experiment will be using Laropal A81 dissolved in Spike Lavender Oil, but this process seems to take months. In a way, this itself is a good thing. Such a resin should be difficult to dissolve to be useful.
I was also reminded today of a quote by Jan Swafford, that the reality of life for most artists is art or death. A non-artist can't understand this, there is no third option. Artists must, by compulsion, make art all of the time, perhaps because they recognise the speed of life, that we'll die anyway; why work, retire, and die, when we can make a mark or cry at the void then die with greater satisfaction?
One last painting job was a colour study for 'All Things Bright And Beautiful', a strange painting which I like more and more. It's already powerful and strange. There are various challenges in tone and colour. There's a sun, which I'd normally paint light yellow, certainly bright, but here I felt it needed to be red. I was reminded, another reminder, that in a painting, reality is relative, that what is light, dark, cold, warm in reality is different in a painting. Contrast and balance are more important.
