Today, drew out a new large painting as planned 'Crushed Are The Weak', which (in my old ideas book) was titled 'The Weak Always Get Crushed'. I didn't noticed the cliffs until I'd draw it out, to me these were the White Cliffs of Dover, which has given the painting a refugee theme; certainly one about England. The colours here are difficult as the painting has few defined borders or real-world 'objects', it's something like a miasma of shapes, like a swirl of papers blowing in a storm. It reminds me of later Picasso or Basquiat. I'm reminded that when the mood is ugly, the painting, it's delicacy and coloration, should look as beautiful as possible.
I painted a second colour study for 'All Things Bright And Beautiful', which on the face of it looks very like the first version:
I needed to resolve the horizon. In the centre, light orange, but dark on the right, which looks better, more dramatic. The narrative actually changes as we look along the horizon. The red sun we see first, then look left to the sunset and dandelions, then right at the rusty swing of the end-of-leg. I was also unsure about the foreground floor, which was almost flesh-like in the first version, but looks better green; dark yellow here. The greyer flesh works better too. In my mind the colours are H. R. Giger's, cyan greys. I keep thinking that it might be better to underpaint in greys, something I haven't done in many years. This will have the decayed, romantic beauty of a moonlit graveyard.
The third study was the colour study for 'Them And Us'. This is all pinks, with yellow lights, and yellow and black for green darks.
How brilliant my paintings are at the moment. How brilliant my unappreciated genius. How short life is. I must make stoic plans to paint these. I had planned four in this group but may start on these three instead. The fourth, 'All The Broken Hearted' would be third in a sequence of heart-break paintings after 'Cracked Planet' and 'So, How Have You Been?'. This is a big project, a big series. Would it have commercial appeal? Artistic appeal, certainly. Appeal for fine art collectors, of course. I'd need somewhere to show it, something to do with it, and a triptych of large paintings can be severely limited in where I can submit them.
