Oil On Canvas
I see therefore I am. Possession is achieved first with the eyes and seldom more satisfying: credo of the voyeur. Observation fertilizes the unconscious. The next step inward, behold the phantasm in your mind, attempt to recapture it on canvas; the longing of many but task of the artist. When you work from imagination best to ignore features that delay arriving at the essence of a fleeting dream. Her skin, pose, incorporeal color, all proffer the feeling of a ghostly nocturnal suit, with little detail to import a sense of reality. The absence of skeletal understructure or costume elements (button, cuffs, lapels) tell of woolgathering. The water fall is simplified, reduced to an uneven wavy grid also suggesting her hair. Can you imagine a place in time when a woman could be seen washing her hair at a stream or waterfall, a not be a particularly noteworthy occurrence..? The simplest acts of existence hold the greatest enchantment. For me these express our transient earthling status best. The two pictures facing on this page were conceived and completed in the same month. The solidity of “Parting Her Hair” freed me, enough to paint “Washing Her Hair” as willowy and wispy.