Painting an Epic

"Mountain Music" (A whole lotta) Oil on Canvas. 24 X 30" July-November, 2008.

Here is the largest easel painting I have done to date. And the one I have worked longest and hardest on.

Certainly not the most daring composition, but visually one of the most ambitious I have undertaken. The difficult parts came easy and the easy parts came hard. Just getting a photo of this thing was hard, given my current lighting sitch in the studio--which badly needs addressing.

In it, I think I have managed to harmonize all the major planes with the picture-plane itself, blanace it visually, and get all the various bits talking to each other and holding hands.

This makes a positive, joyful statement about the glory and beauty of the physical world, and how the spiritual might shine through that world, and speak to us.

I would point out several things I particularly like:

• In the sky and the hills, I have painted several different times of the day, adding to the idea of synchronicity that underlies cubism. I don't think this has been done before--at least the idea is original and comes straight from my yeasty old brain.
• The curves and shapes of the figure are repeated in the landscape. No new idea in Post-Impressionism, but not too obvious right off in this picture.
  
• The whole thing opens like a flower from the bottom center. "Growing from the roots of the world". There are three coloured spheres in the bottom third, representing the three primary colours, and the Cosmic, um, other stuff... .
• Things are just abstract enough to allow a certain capriciousness, but still hold their literal signposts well. I'm particularly happy with the potted plant and the gramophone.
• The planes are logically arranges in spacial progression, but maintain the 2-dimensionality of the picture surface.
  
• The heavy overpainting actually contributes to the physicality of the thing, which is gratifying. You can see the evidence of the battle!
  

The drawing I took the image from, done in the same session as the drawing for "Sea Music", and with the same model (Ava). I assumed, or was hoping , that I would have the same success as "Sea Music", which was almost effortless to paint and still stands as my best figurative works to date (and one of my best oils, period). The muse is fickle, and often punishes glibness.

Stage 1, the underdrawing. I thought I had the composition fairly well planned... . You can see the difficulty already emerging of the piece being too heavy to the right. Placing the figure dead-center didn't help, either. The pyramidal/ diamond foundation of the composition, is of course, not new in Western Art, and signals that I wanted this one to be monumental.

After the first three reworkings. I called my good friend and colleague, Sheedo Shirazi over, whose sense of the picture I have come to trust implicitly. She suggested some major and fundamental changes, which were all directly incorporated into the final version at the top of this post. I knew it was a matter of balance, but couldn't see the forest for the trees, and was getting tired of throwing paint at it! She put me straight, suggesting the plant motif for the right, and moving the gramophone to the left. This photo shows me just rubbing some thinned-out white over the areas to be corrected.

Detail of some crunchy bits. There's five layers of paint there, some places. (How does one paint a "cubist" apple?)

I'm very happy with the colour nuances and the distribution of planes in this part. You can just see the old black vinyl peaking out there. Much of this part just happened. The gramophone image here has kinda morphed into some strange, beautiful snake-like, flowering almost sexual symbol for me. Sometimes, the thing paints itself and suggests what it wants as it develops.

So much of this one just happened, after the planning went sideways. All this goes to prove that I am not as left-brain as some people suspect, and that I can surprise myself with my own persistence!