Rudderless in a Sea of Paint

Worked myself into the ground tonight trying to finish a largish piece, but I am growing increasingly frustrated with all the overpainting and brush-cleaning for these uptight "easel paintings" I think I have to do. There may be a sea-change coming in my work (I hope).

I'm always really happy with the paintings I do from life, whether outside the studio, or in it. There is a freshness there and a pleasing simplicity that I find lacking in these paintings that take me hours and hours and are so carefully thought out.

Working from photos rarely produces something I am happy with, with perhaps the odd exception, like the two seascapes of my first post on here.

One coming post will be about my 3 colour system. This is something I have developed myself, although I got the idea from another artist (whose name I have long forgotten). Maybe I need the discipline of only three colours, and mixing everything--this would really train my eye. I have already limited my palette from the old days, and the 5-6 paintings I have done in 3 colours have all turned out pretty good. But maybe that is also because I have painted them from life as well.

I despair, and I need the oxygen of hope in my own work. I can't go back to the good old days when any time I touched the brush it was magic. There as a series of painting I did in the mid-nineties that have an unreproducible paint quality and overall delicacy and freshness (like "Big Sky--Duck Range"; subject for a coming post). I hope these days will come again, and that I will to continue to innovate....


Anyway.....