Another Blue Morning

Another Blue Morning
Oil on stretched canvas, 16x20

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In the monsoon that moved in yesterday afternoon, I headed to the basement with my palette knives. I took another stab at a painting I've already done with brushes, a painting of the back field here, early in the morning.

The light is just coming over the shortest trees, and the field right in front of me is blue with shadow and dew and a fringe of grasses, which I turned into more flowery vegetation. Everybody needs more flowers in their lives!

I'm beginning to get the idea of the palette knife. I'm wrapping my head and eyes around this new way of looking, and I'm enjoying it. The challenge for me is to make these pieces detailed enough to define themselves, while retaining the broad strokes and big shapes that so engage me.

My brother, Rand Cooper, (check out his delightful blog on the ups and downs of being an older parent) wrote to me about the difficulty of finding this balance and how he, as a writer, tends to pile detail upon detail until, sometimes, he passes the point of boldness and uses revision to take things out.

I can scrape things off, for sure, but one of my big goals in all of this is to see in those big, bold shapes. This is going to help me, no matter what kind of art I'm making.